Welcome to Year Of The Opposite: Travis Stoliker's Newsletter for People That Don't Subscribe to Newsletters. Ex: Saddleback, Liquid Web, & Techsmith. Read Time: 6 minutes. 3 months ago I proposed a crazy challenge: “You'll be happier in 7 days or I'll pay you $500!” I proposed this challenge because I was worried about how many of my friends were telling me that they were depressed. I had an idea that perhaps the strategies that worked to resolve my own depression from grief might help others. I was a little surprised that this offer upset one of my loyal readers and someone I respect. After I mentioned that no one had accepted my challenge, I announced that I was raising the reward from $50 to $500, prompting this response: “There’s a reason for that Travis, and it’s not the money. Are you really that tone deaf? I read your comments a while ago about how much greater the world is today than in the past because of Elon Musk and his space ship right around the time that I read the horrific stories of the numerous women, young and old in Israel who were gang raped, passed from soldier to soldier, had their breasts cut off and tossed around like footballs, and only after all of that were brutally murdered. Seriously? Just yesterday, I watched the sentencing of the stupid kid from Oxford whose stupid and neglectful parents bought him a hand gun which he then used to execute four of his classmates, and traumatize an entire community. This is the world we are leaving our children and grandchildren. It is NOT better. It is not better than the era when I went to school with my parents or myself not fearing if I would could home at the end of the day. Your privilege is blinding you.” Year Of The Opposite - Travis Stoliker's Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Ouch. The comment stung me a little bit but I tried to make sure to listen for the truth in it. One of my favorite quotes from Naval is: “If it hurts to hear it, look for the truth in it. If it comforts to hear it, look for the lie in it.” Maybe she was right. Maybe I was delusional that these simple steps might help make people a little happier. Maybe the world is just terrible and getting worse and this explains everyone’s sadness. Maybe she was right. Luckily, 6 readers took me up on my challenge, so we were able to see if she was right! Let’s take a look… As a reminder, here are the rules for the challenge to make you happier. * Work out for 30 minutes everyday. * Ignore your phone, email, & social media for the first 1 hour of the day and the last 1 hour before you go to bed - every single day. * Keep a private journal everyday. * No alcohol or drugs that aren’t prescribed by a doctor for all 7 days. Results: Lets see how those 6 participants did! * Average Happiness Before the Challenge: Participants rated their happiness an average of 5.67 out of 10 before starting the challenge. * Average Happiness After the Challenge: After completing the challenge, the average happiness rating increased to 7.67 out of 10. * Average Tasks Completed: On average, participants completed about 25 out of the 28 tasks, indicating a high level of engagement with the challenge activities. * Average Happiness Increase: The challenge resulted in an average happiness increase of 2 points on the happiness scale. * Maximum Happiness Increase: The largest reported increase in happiness from a participant was 4 points on the scale. * Minimum Happiness Increase: The smallest change recorded was no change in happiness level. But it is worth noting that this individual already had a very high happiness level at 9 out of 10. It stayed constant at 9 out of 10. * Number of Participants Who Reported an Increase or the Same Happiness Level: 6 out of 6 participants! This was A HUGE success! Thank you to all 6 participants. Here is the feedback from each participant: * "It