Be Gleeful

glee·ful

ˈɡlēfəl/

adjective

adjective: gleeful

exuberantly or triumphantly joyful.

"she gave a gleeful chuckle"

synonyms: delighted, pleased, joyful, happy, glad, overjoyed, elated, euphoric, amused, mirthful, merry, exuberant, jubilant

A dear friend and I were hanging out on New Year's Day and she showed me pictures of a person she knew who was truly living life to the fullest. We started looking at these albums of photos of this person who was truly gleeful. She is traveling the world and spending time with her loved one. I immediately exclaim to Chris that I want to be those people when we get old. 

I thought about it a lot. Why do I need to wait to be old to be that person? I mean, sure I may not be able to travel the world just yet, but I sure as heck can be gleeful in my every day life.

I'm not even gonna lie to you. I don't really know how to be that person. But I'm gonna try. I want you to try with me. I'm giving you a challenge. I've tried a few of these challenges before, but I don't always follow through, or I don't get enough people to participate. But I really want you guys to do this with me. I want to do this.

So start out by asking, what makes me gleeful? What makes you gleeful? Traveling? Crafting? Reading? Your child's laugh? Running? Music? Accomplishing goals? Oh, there's so much. Really. If we take the time to think about all of the things we do or see on a weekly basis, I bet we can actually find way more than one thing.

I'm not going to ask you to do this daily.  I'm going to be realistic. Life happens and sometimes it is too hard to keep up daily challenges. I'd like to do a 52 week challenge of being gleeful. I've tried several of the popular challenges and I don't last very long. Mainly because I cannot commit to daily challenges. But here's another thing. Not every day is a happy day. I'm a firm believer that in order to experience the euphoria of the good things, we have to experience pain and sorrow from the bad things. The good things just don't mean as much without the darkness to remind us of just how wonderful they truly are.

Will you join me? I've created a Facebook group for this community. Here's the nifty little button that will take you there. In this group you can share about the things that make you gleeful and have the support of others to help you find the silver lining.

I've obviously had a bit of a head start on this challenge. We took an impromptu trip to Gatlinburg yesterday. It's kind of our thing. We had a great time, even though about a million and one things that happened prior to, or on the way, that could have kept us from doing so. We got a super late start and then had some puke to slow us down. Chris wanted to fish and the poor guy probably only got to fish for 30 minutes. It was cold and rainy, but he had fun. We grabbed a quick dinner at Five Guys and walked the strip a bit. We checked out the huge outdoor store (NOC) for the first time and we had a blast in there. We walked on that skinny little swinging bridge and crawled around in a kid sized cave. We decided to drive to Pigeon Forge to let the kids do something fun. We went to Magi Quest at nearly 10 pm and stayed until 11:30. It was so much fun! The kids have raved all day about what a great time we had. They were a little trollish today, because heaven forbid should they actually sleep late after staying up way past bed time. But oh well, it was a great day. It was a great start for the #BeGleeful challenge. 

Crawling around in a kid sized cave in NOC Gatlinburg

Ober Tramway - proof I was there with my family

Ober Tramway model of the Swiss Alps

In awe of the Space Needle while sipping cheap-o hot chocolate

We made it quite a merry little Friday because starting Monday, our life returns to the normal. The normal for us lately is busy and not much fun. But I'm certainly going to do everything in my power to change that. So my peeps, are you with me? Are you ready to #BeGleeful? 

~Peace out my homies. I've left you with a Jimmy Needham song that I can't listen to without smiling and being happy. Enjoy!