Happiness is not some “thing” to be pursued, it is a way of being born from appreciating – Rasheed Ogunlaru
At the beginning of 2023, I decided that instead of resolutions or goals, I would embrace two mantras, “Be Happy” and “My life is mine to create.” These two things seemed to be easy reminders to follow or so I thought.
Easing into the 3rd month of this year, I feel I have had several lessons appear about the happiness thing that I want to share with all of you.
First, have you ever noticed that when you make a proclamation like my mantras, everywhere you turn, someone is writing about that exact thing and the stories are popping up like rabbits? It’s like someone is stealing my thoughts or listening to my every word (oh wait, that’s our phones, LOL!)
Anyway, I did read some interesting stuff and what I learned is while I’m working on being happy, bad things are still happening around me that make me feel sad, mad, and lots of other feelings that are anything but happy.
What I learned from my reading is the minute you try to push all of those other feelings away, and work at getting back to “happy” the harder those feelings push back. The solution to this is to let those feelings happen, giving them the time and space that is needed before working your way back to being happy.
This is where I think “being happy” gets a bad rap because if you are happy you should not have time to give space to bad feelings. (Let me add here that negative feelings are not bad, they are part of the human experience, so let’s not discount them.)
If you went around all of the time, with rainbows shooting out of your head, how in the world could you ever feel compassion or empathy?
This leads me back to being happy, it’s not something you get from slapping a smile on your face when you feel like shit, or like the quote above says, it’s not a “thing”, it’s an appreciation and it happens in little moments, snippets of your daily life that makes your heart sing.
Life will crowd in, and bad things will happen to the people you love and care about, but in a small moment, the sunrise is so stunning that it makes you smile and you send a prayer to that person in need. You hold a door open for someone else, share a smile, or listen to the person speaking to you without interruption and their gratitude fills your heart.
That is my lesson about happiness and I’m working on being more aware of each of those happy moments as they come into my life, appreciating them more and more, filling my second mantra, “my life is mine to create” with them.
I hope your “happy” is a sunrise or sunset away, time with a friend or family, or just having that moment of peace all to yourself.
Happy for me is also having you, my tribe, right here in this little corner of the internet. Thank you for your support and love! Drop one of your happy moments in the comments below, I would love to share in your joy.
