On a warm fall day in October 2012, I laced up my sneakers and found myself running through Golden Gate Park deep in thought. I had recently shut down my startup Joyo, a coaching platform focused on careers and happiness. After many months of running on empty in every imaginable way, I was completely exhausted and ironically not at my happiest. I had pushed hard to realize my dream, but in the process of doing so lost the very thing that I was so adamantly chasing after in the first place.

With each step I took that afternoon, I came closer and closer to the conclusion that I was done running. I was done striving for some far out and elusive state of having “made it.” I was done living for later. I was done with feeling insanely tired all of the time. F-it. I wanted to live now. I wanted to be joyous in the moment, regardless of what that made me. Maybe I’d be less interesting. Maybe my resume would be less sexy. Who knows? I didn’t have the answer. All I knew is that I had to change the way that I lived. Both the rewards of success and the lessons of failure would always feel irrelevant to me, if it meant losing the ability to wake up every morning and feel deeply alive.

As I ran through the Conservatory of Flowers, I stopped suddenly, blown away by the explosive beauty of a Dahlia garden. I took a picture and in that moment was struck with spontaneous inspiration. Every day for the next 100 days I’d take a photograph of something that brought me joy. It would be a little experiment, that’s all. And so it began. As I started to capture the little joys in my life, I began to discover the ways in which I had allowed for happiness to evade me. I also started to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which I personally experienced joy. I found the practice to be so rewarding that when the New Year arrived, I decided to continue with the project throughout 2013.

My focus on little joys has since become a way of checking in with myself. If I get to the end of the day and have yet to take a picture, I usually see it as a red flag. It indicates how I’m going about life and how I’m showing up. Interestingly enough, these red flags do not occur on the truly bad days. Instead, they tend to occur on the busy, neutral, mindless days – the days when I cross off my to-do list, am generally productive and efficient, yet manage to somehow go through the day feeling relatively little and connecting with others in relatively insignificant ways. These are the days that scare me.

It would be all too easy to burn through life in this constant state of busyness – a state that is widely accepted, often encouraged and at times even celebrated. Little Joys is my antidote. It brings me back. It slows me down. It requires me to pause, to feel, to see. It asks me “what are you experiencing right now, in this very moment, in this very place and time, that is true and real?” Most importantly, though, it teaches me over and over and over again that joy is not about where we’ve been, what we have or where we’re striving to go. It’s about the lens that we bring to where we are right now.

What started as a playful little experiment has since become a daily practice in attention and awareness. It’s become an exercise in finding significance and beauty in the present moment – even when seemingly insignificant. It is the manifestation of my intention to live both deliberately and consciously. It is the choice I’ve made to allow my journey to be worthwhile on its own. On some days this comes much easier than on others, but over time and with consistency it’s become a sacred habit that has changed how I live.

The selection of photos below reflect just a few of the learnings that I’ve gained along the way.

1. Little Joys appear in shades of truth.

140/365: Gathering wild flowers – Palomarin trail. #hike #bolinas #summer

When I am present, aware, and living in truth, my Little Joys are vivid.

188/365: Exhaustion > Attention. Yesterday was the first day I forgot to take a picture. I was traveling and wiped out after a full weekend of conferencing, dancing, and meeting lots of amazing people. Must sleep more.

When I’m depleted, absent and living on autopilot, they disappear.

2. Little Joys can be simple and seemingly insignificant.

10/100: The smell of warm, freshly washed sheets.

78/100: Peeling a clementine in one whole piece. #skills #satisfaction

242/365: Music in the stairwell – it was a sunny, peaceful afternoon of domestic bliss. #home #femalejazzvocalist

3. Little Joys can be bold, exciting and adventurous.

76/365: Spontaneous travel – living without hesitation.

In this instance the Little Joy was really about making the choice to pick up and go. It was about my willingness to say “hell yes” to opportunity and adventure. It was about the immense sense of freedom that I always get when I choose to live without hesitation.

84/365: Writing down my 2013 #bucketlist. What else?!

One of the things I’m focusing on this year is making sure that I actually do the things that I think or talk about wanting to do. This has required dropping indecision and excuses. It’s required choosing and going after what I want.

228/365: Top of the world – half dome delight. #yosemite #sunning

4. Sometimes Little Joys are more like a whisper.

30/100: Dimples – Met a boy with an amazing smile (but I didn’t take his picture).

68/100: Late afternoon light quietly sweeping over San Francisco – and then it was gone. #ephemeral

30/365: Sometimes I fantasize about being a flower arranger.

5. Oftentimes Little Joys are simply ours to choose.

151/365: Taking care of myself – #greenjuice