“Happiness”?

Happiness is not an end goal. Happiness is not a place or a person, it’s not something you necessarily achieve. So…what is happiness? Where can you find happiness? How can you achieve it? Why does happiness go away?

Happiness is a choice, best described by positive decisions and changing your behavior. For instance, you’re unhappy with your body, you obsessively weigh yourself and struggle, dieting to extremes. That is not happiness. Or you’re unhappy in a relationship or friendship. Everything your partner does is wrong, you focus on the flaws, the negatives. That is living in the problem, soaking in your misery if you will. Whatever it is, these “THINGS” and “OTHER PEOPLE” make you unhappy.

The fact of the matter is, its not those things or other people’s lives; as much as it hurts I’m just going to rip the bandaid off and tell you that YOU are unhappy. You’re probably a lot like me, impatient, demanding, with high expectations and short time frames. While yes you need a little pressure in your life to nip you in the butt every morning, you have to stop living in your own mind focusing on how things “should” and “could” be and start living in the world of happiness.

Make smaller goals for yourself and in your life. Become happy with small achievements, such as eating healthy, or when your partner remembers something small, don’t lower your expectations but lower the timeframe you expect things to be done.  Stress and negativity will eat at your happiness. Overall happiness is found when you choose to find the joy in every little thing you possibly can. All those little things will work like bricks to build a wall of happiness around your soul. When your happiness has a solid foundation, the negativity will melt away like dew drops on leaves during the summer months.

Find it all around you! When the weather is nice; when there’s no traffic. When there is traffic and you get that me time you’ve been dreaming about in an unexpected way, allowing you to clear your head. When your old favorite song is on the radio. Happiness comes from within.

Everything big was once small. And yes that does pertain to your friend groups, your success, your happiness AND your problems. What we need to do is make the problems small again and the happiness big. Life is about balance, if you want me to revert back to my Sunday yoga classes and hokey phrases, life is a ying yang. If your happiness is big, your problems will seem small, yet the scale can tip the other way too. Funny how that works right?

How do you plan to make the odds in your favor this week? Choose happiness, people!

With love,

Anna B