A Week of Good Vibes: My Mental Health Experiment

Ciao lovelies! A little while ago, I noticed my mental health had taken a huge hit from seasonal affective issues, and I was in a rut. Creatively, I felt burnt out, emotionally, I felt drained and sad, and spiritually, I felt exhausted and unhappy with life. Therefore, I decided, enough is enough, and I decided to try a little experiment. I vowed that every day for seven days, I would write AT LEAST one good thing that happened that day, if not more. I’ve heard that keeping gratitude journals like this can help with depression, etc., so I figured I’d give it a shot. The results not only shocked me, but I feel like doing this experiment taught me about life and myself. 

The Concept of the Experiment

I decided to keep my log on my phone’s notes app, and I’d record things as I remembered them, or as they happened, or both. I didn’t log every single good thing that happened in each day, just the big ones that stood out to me at the time of writing them into my phone’s notes app. You might notice, just as I noticed, that the amount of good things in my log seemed to increase through the week- I’ll get into that in my reflection after I share the log.

Just what did I find in each day?

My Log

Here are the contents of my log. I haven’t changed anything that’s fundamental in it, all I did was make each entry into a complete sentence instead of the fragments from my phone.

Day One: Today a waitress at the restaurant we went to for lunch called me beautiful. Also, a nice woman at the store said I had good energy.

Day Two: I had a fun night with my family doing a gift exchange game!

Day Three: OFT’s YouTube got a new subscriber and someone left a nice comment on our latest video!

Day Four: A shop on Instagram featured OFT on their Instagram story! My bestie Skyped me and I got to talk with him! My family was nice enough to order me a sound machine to help me sleep better!

Day Five: A nice girl in my class that I’m a TA for asked about OFT, and was happy to hear we were doing well. After class, school was closed because of snow. My bestie complimented my photography! I was able to find a good deal on business cards so I ordered some new ones for OFT!

Day Six: A nice girl complimented my outfit. Another very nice girl said she had good vibes about OFT being successful and wished me luck in my endeavors with it. Yet another nice girl in my class had a nice conversation with me. One of my online friends chatted with me a bit today! One of my favorite YouTubers uploaded a video today.

Day Seven: One of my professors complimented my work. One of my online friends responded to a comment I left them! Another online friend tagged me in her Instagram story! I took a selfie that I actually found cute! I treated myself to a double chocolate Frappuccino. Almost everyone I helped at work today said “Have a nice day” back to me.

My Reflections

Those are the things I found in each day for the first week of my log. My log is still ongoing, and I’m still technically running my experiment. But let’s talk a little about what I discovered.

My Self-Esteem

I truly feel that doing this experiment positively affects my self-esteem. I feel more confident and ready to take on each day. I feel more likeable and stopped feeling like everyone hated me or feeling invisible. I’m actually talking to more people, speaking up more, and feeling like I have some control over what happens to me.

My Outlook

Another huge effect of this experiment is my hope and life outlook. Since I am purposefully seeking out good things in each day, suddenly each day feels more positive. I’m more willing to overlook bad things that happen because I can look back at my log and see all the good things that occurred too. I also am noticing more and more good things in each day, which makes me go to sleep excited to see what the next day will hold. Overall, I feel like I’m more hopeful and have more of a positive outlook on life.

My Gratitude

I feel the most effects from my experiment in this category! Since I am seeking out at least one positive thing in each day, I now recognize more events as being positive. As you might’ve noticed while reading the log, the further through the week it got, the more good events seemed to happen in a day. I believe that this was happening for two reasons, one- I feel that I simply appreciated good events more, even the “smaller” ones, and two- I felt like I was on a different frequency. (Check the “Good Vibes” subheading to see what I mean). The appreciation of each positive event really makes me happy, because one of my New Year’s Resolutions was to cultivate a Grateful heart, and I feel like I’m really making progress.

Good Vibes

This experiment makes me feel like I’m existing on a different frequency than before. What I mean by this is: I feel like I’m putting out more positive energy than before, and it feels like the universe is reciprocating. Since the point is to find a positive thing in each day, recently I’ve been (because I’m feeling more confident and hopeful) spreading more positive vibes. Like for example, one of the positive events that occurred was that I received a compliment on my outfit. Well, this occurred in part because I was feeling confident, happy and hopeful- so I had complimented that person’s very cute outfit, and they reciprocated. I feel like my overall energy is just more positive and that attracts more positivity in turn.

My Creativity

I have also noticed a change in my creative spirit from this experiment too.  Before this experiment I was feeling creatively burnt out, but now I feel like I can do anything. I really feel like I have more ideas than before, but maybe the truth is that I don’t doubt my ideas as much because of my self-esteem being boosted by this experiment. I also feel that I’m more open minded and willing to write about new topics and try new ideas, probably also because of the self-esteem mentioned earlier.

Overall Reflections

This experiment has really changed me and my mindset, and I’m definitely going to continue it into the foreseeable future. I’m so glad that I decided to test this out personally, because it really has made such an impact. If you feel up to it, I highly encourage doing this for yourself. It doesn’t have to be complicated; you can do it as simply as I did using my phone. It’s definitely worth the time, I promise. This is such a impactful exercise, and it’s not hard at all to change your mindset, all it took me was one week.

Thanks so much for reading. Will you be trying this for yourself? Let me know in the comments! And please let me know how it goes after you try it. I’m so excited to see how it works for others!

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Thanks again for reading, remember to stay awesome, love yourself, and I'll see you in our next post!