Moments in a Bottle

We have all had struggles with bottled up emotions, frustrations, unhappiness, embarrassment, guilt etc. But how about flipping it up bottling up your happiness, joy, love and so on. I do not mean bottling up in the conventional way of not expressing it to the outside world, but quite literally bottling it up. i.e writing it up and putting it inside a bottle.

This was an idea that was made famous by Elizabeth Gilbert of the novel ‘Eat,Pay,Love’. We heard it though from Tim Ferris who was coerced by a friend to use it to stop and celebrate, enjoy his success and happiness before moving onto the next thing.

Happiness Project: How is it done?

The moments in a bottle is also called as the Happiness Project. You write your about your happy moments in a small sheet of paper and put it in a jar. Simple.

Happiness Project: Why?

There are a lot of good reasons to do it :

1. It is a simple way to freeze the happy moment. Just like taking a picture, by writing about the happy moments we freeze it for the future.
2. When you write about the happy moment, you relive it one more time.
3. You start to take note of little happy moments like stopping to smell the roses
4. Makes you feel more grateful about life in general
5. At moments when you are feeling down, a look at this happy stored may just be the medicine for you.

Our moments in the bottle

We have been following this for the last couple of years and even have color coded sheets. Red for happy moments together, Blue for Hari, my husband and Pink for me. Unless the original suggestion, we didnt write every day but we wrote atleast every week and remembered the happy moments as the ones that must go into the jars. The  moments were simple but extremely varied. For Example, the moment spent with a baby nephew, spotting tigers in a jungle, the friend who just called to say Hi, A new project, appreciation at work, kindness from a strangers. Simple moments, that would have slipped our mind if we had not bottled it up.

Touch wood, I never had to look back at the cards to stop myself from fighting with Hari. But I guess its a trick that could work pretty well.

So what are you waiting for, go bottle up your emotions  🙂