APP REVIEW: Gratitude Journal Your Positive Thoughts by Happy Tapper

After my morning exercise, meditation and such, I like to utilize Happy Tapper's Gratitude! app to capture my positive thoughts for the day!  It's a slick and simple app that I first found while digging for "positivity" in the app store.  Soon as I saw it, I snagged it and fell in love with the app, Happy Tapper and Carla Kay White's friendly, positive demeanor!

As I've mentioned before, Gratitude Journal is the first app I saw by Happy Tapper, and I went looking for an iPhone Gratitude Journal for the same reason I wanted a mobile Vision Board.  I had tried countless times to do journaling , whether gratitude or just in general, and ALWAYS failed miserably because I would have to carry the darned thing everywhere at all times to make it useful.  I checked out the few options that were available at the time (a lot more are now) and I've since checked out a lot of the newer ones.  Gratitude Journal by Happy Tapper continues to be the very best in my opinion.  

As the first of their apps, it pioneered their aesthetic of simple, sleek, single purpose apps.  It does one thing, does it well, and with their usual fun and happy look and feel.  Once you set it up, it's pretty self explanatory.  Here's how I use it throughout my day:

I tap on the icon, enter the pin number (because I password protect mine, which is optional), and then I'm on the list of my past days entries.  I tap the "+" sign, I get a fresh page, and I start entering my items that I am grateful for that day.  My day always starts with the same thing "My Morning Routine!".  That serves a dual purpose for me.  I can see at a glance how many days I have been successfully completing all my morning items, AND I'm EXTREMELY grateful that I am doing so, so of course it works for the idea of Gratitude as well.

Next I tap on the little photograph at the bottom, and select a photo from my library that I find inspirational.  I take a lot of pics with my phone, so this is not usually a problem.  If I don't have anything that moves me that day, I leave it as is and it just uses the little Gratitude! icon guy.    Lastly, I tap 5 stars, and I'm done!  You can rate your day 1-5 stars.  Mine are almost always 5 stars because of my outlook on life, but that's fairly recent.  I used to rate the day differently than I do now and I found the star ratings to be not so important.  Since reading Savor, I look at it as a GRATITUDE journal, and the only things in it are things I am grateful for, so the star rating has lost it's meaning for me personally.  Every day is a GREAT day!

That's it.  Gratitude! is another very simple, wonderfully designed app by Happy Tapper that should be a benchmark for app designers.  If more developers would strive for this type of slick feel and smooth operation of a simple task, the app store would be better for it!

Bottom line:  Like the Vision Board, it may be something you are really in to, or it may seem strange to you.  But having used it regularly for a very long time, I can tell you that at the very least you'll find it a great way to keep you focused on the things that matter in life, and take your attention away from the things that don't!  What I like about Gratitude Journal - as opposed to any "regular" journal - is that you are not writing anything negative.  If you do this first thing in the morning, and review it before bed, it will start and end your day with positive thoughts.  AND it's been created by Happy Tapper in such a way that makes the whole process fun, simple and effortless.  What more could you ask?

Go get it!
MondoSamu

APP REVIEW: Happy Tapper Apps (Part 1 - The Vision Board)

So, I wake up at 4:45a.m., I do 30 minutes of Simply Tai Chi, I enter my exercise in to the LoseIt! app by FitNow for the iPhone, meditate for 15 minutes using Meditate - Meditation Timer by SimpleTouch Software and then I use all three of the Happy Tapper apps.  Let's look at the first one - Vision Board Deluxe - and how I use it.

After my meditation, I open the Vision Board Deluxe app from Happy Tapper.  All the Oprah fans out there probably know exactly what a vision board is, but the rest of us may never have heard of such a thing.  Personally, I read a lot of motivational and self-help books.  I don't do so because I'm looking for help with anything in particular, I just find them to be excellent ways to stay positive and motivated.  For instance, I love Dr. Wayne Dyer's books.  Especially his audio.  I find his voice, as well as his story telling, to be very good.  One of my favorites is "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life" which examines the Tao Te Ching.  I have read and listened to the audio of that several times and just find it to be a great way to remain motivated.  I do that with most self-improvement books.  Well, if that sounds like good advice to you as well, then a Vision Board - especially one you can carry and update at all times - is a great idea!

Anyhow, somewhere along the way I learned what a vision board was and I tried it out.  I got a cork board, filled it full of pictures of the things I wanted, places I wanted to go, goals I wanted to achieve.  It was pretty cool, but I rarely looked at it, and never updated it.  Bottom line…it wasn't portable, so it wasn't for me.  I'm a high-tech guy on the go, and I found that if I couldn't carry it around, it didn't help.  At this point, I actually made a really cool bookmark version of mine, and started using it in whatever book I was reading, so at least I saw it a lot more.  It was analog-lo-fi-paper-based, so I still didn't REALLY use it, especially once I got my Sony eReader (for free from Google - but that's another story!).  So I went looking for a mobile version.  One I could pull out and view any time, anywhere.

Enter Happy Tapper!  Since Gratitude! (formally known as Gratitude Journal Your Positive Thoughts)  by Happy Tapper came out first, I actually used it first and it just so happened that around the same time I was looking for a vision board app, Happy Tapper released the ULTIMATE Vision Board Deluxe app!  I snagged it the moment it landed in the app store!

As I had, by that time, come to expect from Happy Tapper it was AMAZING!  Perfectly designed to do one simple job and do it well with a fun, happy aesthetic that I appreciated.  As a guy, I have always found Happy Tapper apps just a touch on the cutesy side and have shared this with the developer (and she has taken it to heart).  But if that's the only thing one can find to complain about in an app, then the developer is doing something right!


The apps by Happy Tapper are simply the best at what they do.  And I have always preferred function over form.  Happy Tapper has given us both, beautifully integrated...in all their apps! 

So, I spent a few minutes gathering images on the web of things I would like on my Vision Board, went through the very simple setup process and had my portable Vision Board Deluxe up and running in minutes.  It's so easy to edit and manipulate that you can just add on to it at any point.  You can also have multiple "boards".  I created several and choose to hit "Play" and watch them cycle.

Here's a screencap of what you see.  There isn't much more to it, and as you can see it's very simple and easy to jump right in to.

So...I launch the app and it shows the title of the "board" and then starts cycling through the images.  You can enter text as well, of course.  My method of using it is to read each one aloud to myself.  All of Happy Tappers apps tend to have quotes in them as well that you can use if you wish.  I have them turned on in mine, so every few frames it inserts a quote that is motivational or inspirational.  I find this keeps it fresh so that you stay focused on it instead of getting accustomed to your own entries and drifting off from the purpose which is focusing on the visualization.

All of mine take about 5 minutes to cycle through.  When I am done, I exit and move on to the next app!

That was a lot of information to say something rather simple, but to recap, the bottom line is:

Vision Board Deluxe is a very sleek, simple app to help you visualize your goals.  Whether you're a believer in Vision Boards, or you just need something to help you focus on your goals, it's a GREAT solution.  The BEST solution, in my opinion!

Next app I review will be Gratitude! by Happy Tapper...stay tuned.

MondoSamu

***UPDATE*** I mistakenly posted pics of both Vision Board AND Gratitude!  I've removed them and apologize for any confusion!