Finding Happiness

In today’s society, it’s very easy to be so focused on the main goals in our lives that we often forget how important it is to pay attention to the day to day.  We hear the phrase “take pleasure in the little things” quite regularly, but how often do we pay that idea more than just lip service?  Until recently, I found myself chasing goal after goal and looking for a better life so fervently that it became my way of life.  One day I finally stopped and realized that I was so focused on making things better for the indeterminate future, that I was completely ignoring my here
and now, and even worse, that here and now was becoming quite miserable.

In coming to terms with this realization, as well as my own personal realization that my future may not hold everything that I had once imagined for it (as happens to many of us, in my case this was because of a medical disability), I struggled for a time to determine what this meant.  After going through a range of emotions, many negative, some even destructive perhaps…I eventually came to the conclusion that I should adopt a different view on life and the way I was living it all together.

Too often we neglect the soul, though it is perhaps the most important part of ourselves to nurture.  If the spirit is drained, then we cannot hope to be our best and most productive selves.  What this has meant for me has been to redefine happiness on the most basic level.  We are taught to measure the level of our success in amounts of possessions.  My challenge to you is to ask yourself “Do these things really make me happy?”  Through this exercise, I have found it much more fulfilling to find happiness and peace in activities that cost nothing.  Simple pleasures that recharge the mind, body and soul.  An energizing walk through the city gardens on a sunny afternoon. Curling up with a good book or favorite movie and a cup of hot chocolate on a blustery winter evening.  Taking pride in a well completed work.  Notice the way these things make you feel and enjoy the true and honest euphoria of that happiness.

After learning to appreciate the joy that life brings by just being, I have also been able to become comfortable with the idea that whatever the future does hold for me, I will not only be ok with, but it will make me truly happy and fulfilled.  Whatever plan is laid out before me, I have the power and the right to change as I see fit.  This may not sound like much of an epiphany, but it is very liberating, especially if you are someone who has struggled to fit into certain molds for much of life.  Your future lies in your hands alone.  Period.  If you don’t like the way something is going in your world, change it.  Change anything, even if it is a tiny change, just make the first step in a new direction.  Then when you make the second step, and the third, it eventually gets easier from there.  Once you begin to learn to let go of the negative thoughts that have become roadblocks in your mind, you can start to turn “I can’t do that” into “I should try,”  and the greatest of empires were only built because someone first dared to try.