UPOs - happiness out the blue

What is a UPO? Not an Unidentified Plying Object, but an Unexpected Positive Occurrence! It's something that makes you feel good that happens completely out of the blue. For example, finding $10 on the sidewalk, or a phone call from a friend you haven't heard from in a while.

I came up with this concept during a long and dark depression many years ago. It helped me remember that - no matter how gloomy my current circumstances seemed - there was still hope of good things happening completely out of the blue to make my life much better.

Over the years I've gotten into the habit of writing down the UPOs that happen, whether small or big, in the section at the back of my journal dedicated to tracking the good things in my life. I also swap lists of UPOs with friends by email. Here is a list of my recent UPOs.

• a friend rang out of the blue to offer me a whole swag of veges from her garden, which meant I needed to buy almost none in my weekly grocery shop
• my neighbour, who I've not always got on wonderfully well with, offered me a bag of fresh plums from the tree in his garden
• a friend rang up to say she'd bought me a jar of the delicious red pepper dip I like from a discount deli shop for $1 when I hadn't even known she was going there. Bonus!
• I took my dogs to a different place to walk from usual because our normal park was being used for sports. We had a wonderful time across the other side of town walking beside a stream lined with gorgeous trees. The dogs had a ball in the different surroundings and I found all the stresses of the day just floated away
• a friend rang out of the blue when I was feeling ill and was incredibly supportive, even offering to pick up some groceries if I needed her to
  
• I left home in the rain and was dreading driving over a range of hills in the wet weather but just before I reached them the bad weather cleared up and I was able to drive over them in bright sunshine
• a friend rang and invited me and another friend round to afternoon tea, something she's never done before, and
  
• I got an email from someone interested in coming to the writers' group I coordinate.

Has something nice happened to you out the blue and boosted your spirits? If so I'd love to hear about it. To post a comment, just click on the 'x comments' line at the bottom of this post.