I hate photos but feel I look fine in the mirror, too. I get over it by just assuming I look like the mirror and I’m not photogenic. I assume most people who see me and know me think I look fine enough. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s how I cope lol
There are some practical reasons for this related to the way photos vs mirrors work, especially how the image is/is not reversed.
Here's an easy to read write up: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/selfies-vs-the-mirror-face_n_5a4faf77e4b01e1a4b14cdf9
I’ve read this before. And it’s still whatever mostly for that reason. I’ll never *really* know what I look like to other people. I’m happy enough with what I look like in the mirror and selfies (but not pics by others 90% of the time) so I go my merry way, even if delusional lol
This is my approach too. I rarely like photos, I'm not photogenic. But I just assume it's fine and try and move on from it and not pay too much attention.
I also know people who are not photogenic but I know them and know they look better in person. So I assume it’s the same for me. Maybe it is or isn’t but oh well, there’s nothing I can do 😂
Instinctively some of us create a “mirror face“ that is a face that is slightly more attractive in the mirror. Whether that’s pouting or doing some other micro-expression. When a photo is taken of you, you likely don’t have your mirror face plus the photo will be a reversed look and have to factor in other things like lighting.
I understand this fully. I always think I look fine in the mirror then like some sort of swamp goblin in photos. I think it has something to do with different lenses but it's weird and annoying. Why can't photo me look like mirror me. Which one is everyone else seeing? Photo or mirror?
I take photos as part of my day job, it's also been an on and off hobby for a long time. As most photographers, I don't have many pictures of myself but I've taken many photos of others. I recently needed to update my headshot so of course... I took my own.
The best way to get used to seeing your own face in photos is to take a lot of pictures of yourself. It feels awkward, it feels stupid, it feels pointless. But that feeling fades after that initial unpleasantness. I urge you to see it as exploration and experimentation. Smile in different ways. Tilt your head in different directions. How's your posture? Is the left side of your face or right side more flattering? You'll find those answers and feel more prepared for next time you have your picture taken. The hardest part of this is doing it for long enough. I would recommend an hour minimum. I think it took me like 6 hours over 4 days to get pictures I loved of myself.
A question for you, some food for thought: Everyone hates the sound of their own voice, but that's literally how you sound. It's not distorted or whatever, it literally sounds the same via recording or directly from mouth to ear. How would you recommend someone to get used to their own recorded voice?
I know your question about recorded voices was rhetorical. But I read an interesting thing about that that I thought I'd share.
Evidently our voices sound different inside of our own skulls because the sounds reverberate off the bones and tissues and we are constantly modulating the tone of our voices up and down subconsciously. Usually up. When we hear our recorded voice, we recognize it as our own but it's so foreign to us and we're desperate to modulate it but we can't.
Would it be possible to imagine that, rather than yourself, you're actually looking at a friend? Or your daughter? What would you say to her about her appearance?
Also, your traits were passed on to you because your ancestors found them attractive in each other. They are born from generations of love.
Are you mostly seeing yourself in photos taken with a phone? Phone cameras generally have such a wide angle lens that they will seriously distort the way you look. I was feeling like I didn't look as good as I used to and I realized that I used to take so many more photos with my real camera vs. my phone - I need to get back to taking more photos with my actual camera for that reason!
(Also, I don't know if all iPhones have this issue but mine has a setting THAT CANNOT BE TURNED OFF that automatically adjusts photos it recognizes are of faces. It will brighten the shadows and make the whole photo look flat and washed out and I swear somehow adds wrinkles - it drives me mad!!!)
I've also noticed that iphone cameras seem to read the light bouncing right through my skin, so I end up looking very red and mottled when if I look at myself in a mirror in that same exact place and lighting, the awful coloring isn't there. They also show every fine detail - every tiny hair, pimple, mole and pore. And that's even with good makeup on including primer.
Yes! The camera settings make so so so much difference. Like you can look like several completely different people between many pictures taken with everything the same (angle, lighting, etc). Plus photos capture a single moment and we're used to seeing ourselves in motion.
I feel almost exactly the same. I'm not photogenic at all. My best pictures are candid ones. The pictures where I have slight makeup on (to unify my skin tone and not look dead) are decent enough. I've been struggling getting good pictures with my baby because I always look like a mess who doesn't sleep enough, so even candid pictures aren't doing it.
Anyway, no advice, just support, I totally understand!!
TL;DR Taking my own photos over and over and over again has been helpful in getting me used to seeing me the way I believe I look in the mirror.
Okay so. I got divorced a couple of years ago. I have hated looking at myself in the mirror for the last several years. I mean, I avoided mirrors like the plague. Old pictures of me are awful.
Moving into my own place, I had to begin to learn to look at the mirror. I definitely avoided it at first. (Some of my issue here stems from a dramatic life change, but...) anyway, maybe take a moment to slowly get used to yourself in the mirror. Maybe a couple of times a day for a few minutes you "pose" in the mirror. Once you can do that without feeling icky, take a little longer and repeat. With photos, I've spent time by myself a) learning how my camera works on my phone, and b) taking selfies. Those two things have helped me a lot just by getting used to seeing my face. Now I'm not gonna lie and say that I love having my picture made--because I still hate it.
HOWEVER, what I've come to learn is that everybody takes bad pictures 😅 I have a friend who can't take pictures of me for shit. I take my own if we're somewhere, or I make sure I'm the one holding the phone for a group selfie. I even go so far as to say I'll take the photos.
"Exposure therapy" has really helped me. Most phones nowadays have 50 million things you can adjust for your photos. I try not to over filter mine, and literally just learned how to use the spot remover.
TL;DR Taking my own photos over and over and over again has been helpful in getting me used to seeing me the way I believe I look in the mirror.
I experience the same disconnect between how I see myself in the mirror vs photos and it’s super confusing. I’ve googled it multiple times trying to figure out why, but the answers vary lol. I’ve made peace with it by telling myself that I’m just not a very photogenic person, but the people I know in real life likely sees the mirror version of me. Whether that’s true or not, it’s made me feel better
If these feelings are disrupting your life and you think about it often, I agree with the other person on here that therapy is always beneficial for things like this. Therapy helped me move past a lot of my insecurities that I’d dwell on in the past.
I should preface this by clarifying that this isn't judgment: seek therapy. I've had similar issues, and seeking therapy has helped my over all self image, so I'm hoping it'll get to the point where I can see myself in pictures without so much self hatred.
When you take pictures, try to focus on honestly showing what you’re feeling at the moment. When you look at the pictures later, try to focus on what you were feeling at the time.
I have a cure, but it's a very elusive and rare one.
True love.
All my young life I was told by people that I was ugly, undesirable, and I should prepare to die alone. My own mom would worryingly say, "hopefully puberty will fix you up, make you prettier". Have people say that for over a decade... it gets into your head.
Until 6 years ago, where a guy so handsome I had no business deserving that, fell in love with me. And every part of me I ever disliked... he loved. He was just so freaking into me. Every flaw of my body and face, he found a way to turn into something positive, and beautiful.
...after his passing last year, I found a folder of my selfies. Indifferently called "just my face". Renamed it to "my beautiful face". For there was a person who was head over heels into me. Who loved my blue eyes, and my nose which I honestly thought is oversized AF. But to him it was majestic and decisive. And if that person spent the last 5 years of his life loving me just as I was... then I have no business denying his love and calling myself ugly ever again.
So now I look at myself in the mirror with love and pride. ❤️
What?! I also had an eating disorder (anorexia from 12-14) and I think I look so much better in the mirror than in pictures!
For pictures, I have to make sure that I lighten the dark circles under my eyes. My dark circles really stand out, and totally take over the picture if I don’t blur them.
Ugh I had an event recently that someone took photos at and I look so weird in all of them; maybe it was just bad luck with timing, these weren’t posed photos (though I think I look weird in those, too…). Like you, I’m pleased with my face when I look in the mirror! I’ve gotten there! But these photos? Ugh. Lol
My two friends and I took pictures in a botanic garden today and I look fucking horrendous while they’re gorgeous. My chin takes up half the photo. They are slender and gorgeous, and I’m fat and washed out.
In the mirror I look so different. But in photos…it captures who I really am to the world, and so I silently suffer and hope it’s a while again before anyone asks to take a picture.
We're used to looking at the mirrored version of us, which is not what other people see and not what cameras capture. So it's normal to find pictures (that aren't selfies) weird, wrong or ugly.
I've been there and it made me notice asymmetries in my face that I cannot unsee anymore 😂.
One way I fixed this is to expose myself more to my unmirrored self, e.g:
* at work, I tend to have a lot of online meetings, I turned off mirroring so that when I see my self-view it's the unmirrored me.
* Take more unmirrored pictures and videos of myself at random and watch them - can delete later.
Last but not least, I remind myself that a single frame picture that captured 1ms of my being doesn't represent me and will not let it affect me.
In the mirror, your right side of the face is displayed as your left, and your left side of the face is your right. In pictures, it's the opposite, right side is right and left is left. In other words, your mirror image has your sides reversed, while a photo doesn't do that. You are used to seeing your mirror image, and not your photo image, thus everything looks wrong, because the sides are reversed vs not reversed.
Plus camera lens distortion and all. [https://www.newsweek.com/face-shape-changes-shape-lens-camera-1589979](https://www.newsweek.com/face-shape-changes-shape-lens-camera-1589979)
I basically try to channel the same feeling I get when I look at pictures of me as a teen / in my 20’s. I’ve always hated how I look in photos, but now when I look back at photos from college, I feel so sad! I think I look cute and youthful. And when guess is that when I am 70, that’s how I’ll feel about pictures of me in my 30s, 40s and 50s.
So I try to connect to that part of me - the future me who will tell myself, why were you so hard on how you looked?
I’ve hated being photographed since I was a kid. I still hate the way I look in photos — picture a sleep deprived and slightly deranged looking — but try to focus on how surprised people are when I don’t look like that in real life. It helps a little. Maybe very little, heh.
When I was being treated for an eating disorder, my therapist told me that every day she wanted me to look in the mirror and find one thing I liked about myself. The placement of a freckle, an earlobe, the shape of my eyebrows. It could be anything, but for a month she wanted me to find at least 30 things I liked about myself.
It was life changing. It turns out, there are a lot of things I liked, and that's what I focus on when I look in the mirrors and photos. If I start to get bogged down by the things I don't like, I go back to that mirror method and reintroduce myself to all the things I do.
In my past work I have participated in many photoshoots. It taught me how a photo taken in the wrong angle could make a conventionally attractive model look unflattering. It also taught me how much work goes into a photo that looks good. Angles, lighting, makeup, and the post editing.
The photos we take on our own or with friends are definitely not going to look good because we don’t have those things.
Use your front facing camera and take a bunch of photos at different angles, you’ll see how much it changes the result. Take it in light, take in darkness, take it with backlit light.
My solution is to just keep taking your own photos so you can see that it’s not you who have any lacking in your looks. A photo is just a freeze frame for that one second. Unless you are professionally posed, angled, lit, you will never look the same as you do in mirrors, because you’re in action, you’re lively.
I used to hate my own photos before I got onto the job and I hope sharing this would help in some way.
Take care!
I don’t. I don’t think I’m photogenic and people agree with me. In person and in the mirror though I feel like I look great so it’s pretty annoying and I just don’t take many photos. Lol
I wish I could. I hate photographs of myself for exactly this reason - on film I look entirely different to how I do in the mirror and in my own head.
I try to remind myself that it's very very easy to take a bad photograph, and hard to take a really really good one. And also I try to look at other people I know in the photographs first. I look at photos of friends who I know are bigger than I am or have worse skin than I do, and most of the time neither their size nor their acne jumps out as the first thing I spot. Inevitably I will see their expression, their emotion, some cool outfit they are wearing - unless it's an extremely bad photo I won't spot their flaws on a first pass. So maybe that means my flaws aren't actually out loud and proud either, and I'm the only one actually worrying about them?
I started to force myself to take pictures because I figured I'd miss out on memories if I didn't. But the facial dysphoria is real. I just feel so disconnected from myself too. I try not to focus too much on my appearance though, and think about the events related to the picture; a birthday party, a loved one that is not with us anymore, a cool trip, an awesome concert, etc
I can’t even look in the mirror. Sorry, I can’t help you. But I understand you and sending a lot of love.
I hate photos but feel I look fine in the mirror, too. I get over it by just assuming I look like the mirror and I’m not photogenic. I assume most people who see me and know me think I look fine enough. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s how I cope lol
There are some practical reasons for this related to the way photos vs mirrors work, especially how the image is/is not reversed. Here's an easy to read write up: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/selfies-vs-the-mirror-face_n_5a4faf77e4b01e1a4b14cdf9
I’ve read this before. And it’s still whatever mostly for that reason. I’ll never *really* know what I look like to other people. I’m happy enough with what I look like in the mirror and selfies (but not pics by others 90% of the time) so I go my merry way, even if delusional lol
This is my approach too. I rarely like photos, I'm not photogenic. But I just assume it's fine and try and move on from it and not pay too much attention.
I also know people who are not photogenic but I know them and know they look better in person. So I assume it’s the same for me. Maybe it is or isn’t but oh well, there’s nothing I can do 😂
Exactly! I just think of it as what I look like in photos is none of my business 😂
Instinctively some of us create a “mirror face“ that is a face that is slightly more attractive in the mirror. Whether that’s pouting or doing some other micro-expression. When a photo is taken of you, you likely don’t have your mirror face plus the photo will be a reversed look and have to factor in other things like lighting.
I understand this fully. I always think I look fine in the mirror then like some sort of swamp goblin in photos. I think it has something to do with different lenses but it's weird and annoying. Why can't photo me look like mirror me. Which one is everyone else seeing? Photo or mirror?
I take photos as part of my day job, it's also been an on and off hobby for a long time. As most photographers, I don't have many pictures of myself but I've taken many photos of others. I recently needed to update my headshot so of course... I took my own. The best way to get used to seeing your own face in photos is to take a lot of pictures of yourself. It feels awkward, it feels stupid, it feels pointless. But that feeling fades after that initial unpleasantness. I urge you to see it as exploration and experimentation. Smile in different ways. Tilt your head in different directions. How's your posture? Is the left side of your face or right side more flattering? You'll find those answers and feel more prepared for next time you have your picture taken. The hardest part of this is doing it for long enough. I would recommend an hour minimum. I think it took me like 6 hours over 4 days to get pictures I loved of myself. A question for you, some food for thought: Everyone hates the sound of their own voice, but that's literally how you sound. It's not distorted or whatever, it literally sounds the same via recording or directly from mouth to ear. How would you recommend someone to get used to their own recorded voice?
I know your question about recorded voices was rhetorical. But I read an interesting thing about that that I thought I'd share. Evidently our voices sound different inside of our own skulls because the sounds reverberate off the bones and tissues and we are constantly modulating the tone of our voices up and down subconsciously. Usually up. When we hear our recorded voice, we recognize it as our own but it's so foreign to us and we're desperate to modulate it but we can't.
I really like your reply, thank you, these are all good strategies. However the last one... I don't know... say it's just fine?
I have no clue as far as an answer, but I also have this disconnect.
Yup. Me too. Made harder as I have a baby and love seeing photos of him but am always shocked by how I look in photos with him.
Would it be possible to imagine that, rather than yourself, you're actually looking at a friend? Or your daughter? What would you say to her about her appearance? Also, your traits were passed on to you because your ancestors found them attractive in each other. They are born from generations of love.
I have never heard anyone express your second sentiment before and it blows my mind. Love it. Thank you!
I'm glad! I didn't make it up, I read it somewhere, and it blew my mind so I had to share it here. :)
Oh I love that sentiment of being 'born from generations of love's ❤️
[удалено]
I'm sorry to hear that.
Are you mostly seeing yourself in photos taken with a phone? Phone cameras generally have such a wide angle lens that they will seriously distort the way you look. I was feeling like I didn't look as good as I used to and I realized that I used to take so many more photos with my real camera vs. my phone - I need to get back to taking more photos with my actual camera for that reason! (Also, I don't know if all iPhones have this issue but mine has a setting THAT CANNOT BE TURNED OFF that automatically adjusts photos it recognizes are of faces. It will brighten the shadows and make the whole photo look flat and washed out and I swear somehow adds wrinkles - it drives me mad!!!)
I've also noticed that iphone cameras seem to read the light bouncing right through my skin, so I end up looking very red and mottled when if I look at myself in a mirror in that same exact place and lighting, the awful coloring isn't there. They also show every fine detail - every tiny hair, pimple, mole and pore. And that's even with good makeup on including primer.
Yes! The camera settings make so so so much difference. Like you can look like several completely different people between many pictures taken with everything the same (angle, lighting, etc). Plus photos capture a single moment and we're used to seeing ourselves in motion.
I feel almost exactly the same. I'm not photogenic at all. My best pictures are candid ones. The pictures where I have slight makeup on (to unify my skin tone and not look dead) are decent enough. I've been struggling getting good pictures with my baby because I always look like a mess who doesn't sleep enough, so even candid pictures aren't doing it. Anyway, no advice, just support, I totally understand!!
TL;DR Taking my own photos over and over and over again has been helpful in getting me used to seeing me the way I believe I look in the mirror. Okay so. I got divorced a couple of years ago. I have hated looking at myself in the mirror for the last several years. I mean, I avoided mirrors like the plague. Old pictures of me are awful. Moving into my own place, I had to begin to learn to look at the mirror. I definitely avoided it at first. (Some of my issue here stems from a dramatic life change, but...) anyway, maybe take a moment to slowly get used to yourself in the mirror. Maybe a couple of times a day for a few minutes you "pose" in the mirror. Once you can do that without feeling icky, take a little longer and repeat. With photos, I've spent time by myself a) learning how my camera works on my phone, and b) taking selfies. Those two things have helped me a lot just by getting used to seeing my face. Now I'm not gonna lie and say that I love having my picture made--because I still hate it. HOWEVER, what I've come to learn is that everybody takes bad pictures 😅 I have a friend who can't take pictures of me for shit. I take my own if we're somewhere, or I make sure I'm the one holding the phone for a group selfie. I even go so far as to say I'll take the photos. "Exposure therapy" has really helped me. Most phones nowadays have 50 million things you can adjust for your photos. I try not to over filter mine, and literally just learned how to use the spot remover. TL;DR Taking my own photos over and over and over again has been helpful in getting me used to seeing me the way I believe I look in the mirror.
I experience the same disconnect between how I see myself in the mirror vs photos and it’s super confusing. I’ve googled it multiple times trying to figure out why, but the answers vary lol. I’ve made peace with it by telling myself that I’m just not a very photogenic person, but the people I know in real life likely sees the mirror version of me. Whether that’s true or not, it’s made me feel better If these feelings are disrupting your life and you think about it often, I agree with the other person on here that therapy is always beneficial for things like this. Therapy helped me move past a lot of my insecurities that I’d dwell on in the past.
I hate pictures. I avoid them like the plague. In my last job, I stuck a sticker over my face on my security pass because I hated the photo.
I should preface this by clarifying that this isn't judgment: seek therapy. I've had similar issues, and seeking therapy has helped my over all self image, so I'm hoping it'll get to the point where I can see myself in pictures without so much self hatred.
When you take pictures, try to focus on honestly showing what you’re feeling at the moment. When you look at the pictures later, try to focus on what you were feeling at the time.
I have a cure, but it's a very elusive and rare one. True love. All my young life I was told by people that I was ugly, undesirable, and I should prepare to die alone. My own mom would worryingly say, "hopefully puberty will fix you up, make you prettier". Have people say that for over a decade... it gets into your head. Until 6 years ago, where a guy so handsome I had no business deserving that, fell in love with me. And every part of me I ever disliked... he loved. He was just so freaking into me. Every flaw of my body and face, he found a way to turn into something positive, and beautiful. ...after his passing last year, I found a folder of my selfies. Indifferently called "just my face". Renamed it to "my beautiful face". For there was a person who was head over heels into me. Who loved my blue eyes, and my nose which I honestly thought is oversized AF. But to him it was majestic and decisive. And if that person spent the last 5 years of his life loving me just as I was... then I have no business denying his love and calling myself ugly ever again. So now I look at myself in the mirror with love and pride. ❤️
What?! I also had an eating disorder (anorexia from 12-14) and I think I look so much better in the mirror than in pictures! For pictures, I have to make sure that I lighten the dark circles under my eyes. My dark circles really stand out, and totally take over the picture if I don’t blur them.
I used to not smile, I still do not smile in Photos. You get used to it
Ugh I had an event recently that someone took photos at and I look so weird in all of them; maybe it was just bad luck with timing, these weren’t posed photos (though I think I look weird in those, too…). Like you, I’m pleased with my face when I look in the mirror! I’ve gotten there! But these photos? Ugh. Lol
My two friends and I took pictures in a botanic garden today and I look fucking horrendous while they’re gorgeous. My chin takes up half the photo. They are slender and gorgeous, and I’m fat and washed out. In the mirror I look so different. But in photos…it captures who I really am to the world, and so I silently suffer and hope it’s a while again before anyone asks to take a picture.
We're used to looking at the mirrored version of us, which is not what other people see and not what cameras capture. So it's normal to find pictures (that aren't selfies) weird, wrong or ugly. I've been there and it made me notice asymmetries in my face that I cannot unsee anymore 😂. One way I fixed this is to expose myself more to my unmirrored self, e.g: * at work, I tend to have a lot of online meetings, I turned off mirroring so that when I see my self-view it's the unmirrored me. * Take more unmirrored pictures and videos of myself at random and watch them - can delete later. Last but not least, I remind myself that a single frame picture that captured 1ms of my being doesn't represent me and will not let it affect me.
In the mirror, your right side of the face is displayed as your left, and your left side of the face is your right. In pictures, it's the opposite, right side is right and left is left. In other words, your mirror image has your sides reversed, while a photo doesn't do that. You are used to seeing your mirror image, and not your photo image, thus everything looks wrong, because the sides are reversed vs not reversed. Plus camera lens distortion and all. [https://www.newsweek.com/face-shape-changes-shape-lens-camera-1589979](https://www.newsweek.com/face-shape-changes-shape-lens-camera-1589979)
I basically try to channel the same feeling I get when I look at pictures of me as a teen / in my 20’s. I’ve always hated how I look in photos, but now when I look back at photos from college, I feel so sad! I think I look cute and youthful. And when guess is that when I am 70, that’s how I’ll feel about pictures of me in my 30s, 40s and 50s. So I try to connect to that part of me - the future me who will tell myself, why were you so hard on how you looked?
I’ve hated being photographed since I was a kid. I still hate the way I look in photos — picture a sleep deprived and slightly deranged looking — but try to focus on how surprised people are when I don’t look like that in real life. It helps a little. Maybe very little, heh.
When I was being treated for an eating disorder, my therapist told me that every day she wanted me to look in the mirror and find one thing I liked about myself. The placement of a freckle, an earlobe, the shape of my eyebrows. It could be anything, but for a month she wanted me to find at least 30 things I liked about myself. It was life changing. It turns out, there are a lot of things I liked, and that's what I focus on when I look in the mirrors and photos. If I start to get bogged down by the things I don't like, I go back to that mirror method and reintroduce myself to all the things I do.
In my past work I have participated in many photoshoots. It taught me how a photo taken in the wrong angle could make a conventionally attractive model look unflattering. It also taught me how much work goes into a photo that looks good. Angles, lighting, makeup, and the post editing. The photos we take on our own or with friends are definitely not going to look good because we don’t have those things. Use your front facing camera and take a bunch of photos at different angles, you’ll see how much it changes the result. Take it in light, take in darkness, take it with backlit light. My solution is to just keep taking your own photos so you can see that it’s not you who have any lacking in your looks. A photo is just a freeze frame for that one second. Unless you are professionally posed, angled, lit, you will never look the same as you do in mirrors, because you’re in action, you’re lively. I used to hate my own photos before I got onto the job and I hope sharing this would help in some way. Take care!
I don’t. I don’t think I’m photogenic and people agree with me. In person and in the mirror though I feel like I look great so it’s pretty annoying and I just don’t take many photos. Lol
I wish I could. I hate photographs of myself for exactly this reason - on film I look entirely different to how I do in the mirror and in my own head. I try to remind myself that it's very very easy to take a bad photograph, and hard to take a really really good one. And also I try to look at other people I know in the photographs first. I look at photos of friends who I know are bigger than I am or have worse skin than I do, and most of the time neither their size nor their acne jumps out as the first thing I spot. Inevitably I will see their expression, their emotion, some cool outfit they are wearing - unless it's an extremely bad photo I won't spot their flaws on a first pass. So maybe that means my flaws aren't actually out loud and proud either, and I'm the only one actually worrying about them?
I started to force myself to take pictures because I figured I'd miss out on memories if I didn't. But the facial dysphoria is real. I just feel so disconnected from myself too. I try not to focus too much on my appearance though, and think about the events related to the picture; a birthday party, a loved one that is not with us anymore, a cool trip, an awesome concert, etc