Making Miracles in 40 Days

I can't remember exactly when it all happened but somehow along the way, I realized that I wasn't exactly happy. Sure there were days that I felt I couldn't be happier while other days, I just wanted to crawl under my bed sheets and stay there for the rest of my life. Throughout most of my life, I felt as if I was on a roller coaster going up and down and sometimes upside down but always leading me back to the same place. My life had gone through many changes over the years but at the same time, I felt as if nothing had changed.

Had I not learned anything from my life experience? Shouldn't I have achieved some kind of happiness at this point in my life? Why did I feel like I was repeating a lot of the same things that I considered to be mistakes? I found myself hopelessly confused and I truly wished for a miracle.

*Photos taken by myself unless otherwise noted.

One day as I was browsing the amazon bookstore, I was naturally attracted to a book that promised a miracle in forty days. The description talked about a "6-week action plan " that I could put to use right away and this appealed to me as I was pretty desperate for any improvement in my life. After reading the mostly positive reviews of the book, I decided to get the book. I figure I'm always buying cookbooks and novels so I felt that reading the book could only do me some good. I received the book in less than a week and I was more than ready to take my book for a test drive.

First of all, I needed to commit myself to this project for 40 days. No matter how I looked at it, my life was worth investing 40 days of my life so I promised myself to take this project seriously and read the first chapters to make sure I was doing it properly. This time I was serious about taking control of my life and I was going to make the best of my time spent on this project. After my initial preparations of setting goals, I started my 6-week journey.

I started my journey alone and for two weeks, I did the practice exercises every morning. At first I admit I was a bit skeptical because of the simplicity of it all, but after just a few days, I started to feel just a little better and I noticed I felt happier and more cheerful when I woke up in the mornings. One of my best friend has a problem with depression so I decided to see if he would like to be my project miracle partner. I thought it would help him because he's the most pessimistic person I know. After making sure he understood the rules, we started the project together for 40 days.

Project Miracle is based on using the power of gratitude and there is nothing difficult about it. There are no difficult formulas to learn or chapters you have to study. In fact, the practice starts right away in chapter two of the book. After doing it for a few days, I could see how this would benefit anyone because at the least, you'll come out of it being more grateful of things you may have been taking for granted.

So my friend and I started on our 40 journey. The first two weeks were mostly about writing down the negatives in our lives. What was interesting was that as we entered the third week, I had noticed my friend's gratitude start to change in attitude. There were less complaining about things and saying thanks seemed to be taking its place. In place of "I'm grateful for my mother always complaining and nagging me" was replaced with "I'm grateful for my mother always being there for me and putting up with me". It's obvious to anyone that changes have taken place! I could see changes happening to me as well. When I first started, I could have filled up a couple of pages of things that I was unhappy about. But surprsingly during my third week into the project, I was noticing that more than half of my list was about things I were truly grateful for. I'm not really sure how it happened but it just did and it caught me off guard.

By the final day, it was quite obvious that we had manifested small changes in our lives and if I were to be honest, I felt more content and I actually felt happier with my life. Nothing in my life had changed in a big way, but my attitude towards things had. I was much more conscious of life itself, which lead me to feel more alive than I've ever felt in years. For my friend, the changes were apparent as well. He stopped complaining all together that it was kind of creepy. It was clear that something in him had dramatically changed.

It's been a year since we started the project. However because it's been doing so much good for the both of us, we decided to continue with this project and it's become a daily routine for the both of us. It continues to help us and reminds us of what's important in our individual lives. Strength and wisdom does come from within and I truly believe that doing Project Miracle has helped me take my life back into my own hands.

What do you think? Do you consider yourself a happy person? Are you on an emotional roller coaster? Please feel free to leave your thoughts.