Last week was quite literally a week of challenges, and by that I mean challenges on Facebook.First, my friend Marie called me out and challenged me to a Happiness Challenge. To complete the challenge successfully, I had to post three things on my Facebook wall that made me happy for a five-day period. This particular challenge was very appealing to me, because I think it’s a great idea to take a moment every day and embrace what makes me happy in my  life. Last May I started keeping a daily Gratitude Journal where I documented things that I was grateful for, so the Happiness Challenge fit right in with what I was already doing. The challenge caught on, and it was incredibly refreshing to see lists of things that made my friends happy every day when I scrolled through my News Feed.
The other challenge that has been very popular lately is the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. ALS, aka Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects a person’s nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The disease is ultimately fatal. The rules of the challenge state that, once challenged, people will dump a bucket of ice water on their heads within 24 hours of being called out and make a $10 donation to the ALS Association for research, or donate $100 if they fail to complete the challenge within the allotted time.
I watched through the week as friend after friend uploaded videos of themselves taking the Ice Bucket Challenge. Then my boyfriend was challenged, and it was decided that he would do it at a birthday party we attended last Sunday. It seemed like the perfect scenario: we would already have a large bucket of ice that a keg was going to be placed in, so the water was getting used regardless, and there was a hot tub for post-challenge. At some point I decided that I wanted to take part in this, and he obligingly challenged me in the video. Here’s the highlight of it, the moment when the water was dropped.
The thing that I liked about both of these challenges is that they both promoted doing something positive. The Happiness Challenge required focus on what was good, even if someone was having an especially crappy day. And the Ice Bucket Challenge is promoting awareness and raising funds to hopefully cure a terrible disease that could literally impact anyone. I think that both challenges did something good and I’m glad I was included in them!