HAPPINESS IS WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE

When I think about happiness there are so many things that come to mind. I treasure my upbringing values, I focus on my well-being and the feeling of purpose, and I like to view my happiness as a combination of a life well-lived, inner peace, meaning, and growth.

For me, happiness is whatever I want it to be, and it can be like that for you, too. Stop chasing the shallow values of billboards and glossy magazines, and enjoy your simple life to the fullest. Don’t deliberately make your happiness an elusive, unreachable goal, or look for happiness in the wrong places. What we believe would make us very happy actually, according to scientific research, makes only a small and temporary difference, while we overlook the true source of happiness.

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Happiness is not a place to arrive at, a streak of luck that we must wait for, or something we must chase or pursue our whole life to acquire one day.

Plenty of people miss their share of happiness, not because they never found it, but because they didn’t stop to enjoy it.

William Feather

I know that happiness means different things to different people, but it is your way of life and it can be whatever you want it to be. Above all, understand that there are many faces of happiness and recognize the beautiful life you have in the ordinary experiences of your daily life.

Define your own version of happiness.

• Happiness is the warmth of the people we love and the expression on their faces when they come back home after a day of work. It’s in the words that don’t need to be spoken because no word is more intense than the look of love.
• It is a wet, warm puppy lick on your cheek or a family vacation.
• It is a house full of kids or no kids at all.
• Watching the clouds on a serene afternoon and smiling back to a warm memory.
• Caring for someone you love and finding meaning in what you do every day.
• It’s the cinnamony scent of freshly baked apple pie or the chicken noodle soup that’s cooking on the stove.
• It may be someone who can tell the difference between the things that matter and the things that don’t.
• It’s learning something new every day.
• It may be a mother who looks forward to hugging her child.
• It may be the soft shades of lavender and pink of a spectacular sunset or a good joke that makes you laugh until you cry.
• A book that you just finished reading and can’t stop thinking about.

Happiness is the life lived in harmony with yourself and with the world by doing the right thing. It is the wisdom of enjoying whatever you have, whatever you do, and whoever you are.

Take the decision to experience happiness in your everyday, simple life, and admit that it has been, all along, right in front of you. Recognize it! It is all yours!