A 75 year study at Harvard concluded that good relationships are what truly keep us happy and healthy. Not money, career success, possessions, good health, travel…. but deep friendship and love.
Just a reminder today to embrace and celebrate the loves in your life.
Read more about Happiness here.
One thing I have learned thus far: Life is defined significantly by the people you keep.
I am reminded again how lucky I am to have so many amazing, wonderful human beings in my life, helping me to be a better human being! I spent the weekend with the people I love most in my life, my family, eating, laughing, and playing boardames.
Happiness can really be that simple.
It is easy to be unhappy.
It is easy to focus on the day to day distractions while avoiding the bigger, underlying issues. It is easy to deflect and blame others, to make excuses for yourself or a situation. It is easy to take the low road, to give that person ‘just one more’ chance, to ‘wait and see’ how things play out, to sit in the safety of inaction.
But happiness requires action. It requires rolling up your sleeves, pulling on your boots, and hiking up the mountain you’ve been avoiding–and sometimes all night, through sleet, snow, and storm. It requires thinking and work, a little risk, and, sometimes, pain.
…And it is more effort than most of us are willing to make, more risk than we are willing to face. We would rather sit in the unhappiness, endure an unfulfilling job, live in a place we hate, stay in a relationship that is toxic, than risk being more unhappy than we already are. We are afraid to make that risk. But without taking that risk, we also have no chance at happiness.
Worse, the danger with tolerating unhappiness in your life is that unhappiness has an intrinsically infectious quality. It can start in one corner of your life and slowly seep into the rest if left unaddressed. While we can often contain our unhappiness for a time, manage it, ignore it, live with it and convince ourselves to be content, this fix is only temporary. Soon enough it will grow to be present in so many aspects of our life that we simply won’t be able to ignore it, and pain becomes a certainty.
If you can’t quite figure it out the root of it all, or if you feel like you have a lot of things going on, try making a list. Don’t over think it the process. Set aside 5 minutes and write everything that comes to your mind that makes you unhappy. From there, choose the three things that give you the most stress, anxiety, or fear.
Even if it is as small as acknowledging the problem out loud. Take steps today to identify the roots of your unhappiness and a map leading up and away from it. Then, tomorrow, take the first step.
I’ll tell you right now, yes, it might not work out, You might get lost along the way, or hurt. You might end up somewhere completely unexpected or unhappy in a different way. But, without any action, there is also no hope for happiness.
As Aristotle wrote, Happiness depends upon ourselves.
-Caitlin Pontrella
People place too much weight upon the expectations of others. They make decisions and choices based on a vision of success someone else has defined for them.
And of course, I think it is hard sometimes to identify your own goals, and your own purpose, free from the influence of the voices of others. We’ve been conditioned all our lives to listen to the voices of others. We have been told, since childhood, what the looks and measures of success are.
Have you graduated college? How much money are you making? How much power? Are you recongized by others for your accomplishments? Do you have a happy marriage–are you married at all? Do you have children? One? Two? Do you have a big house and a backyard and some dogs? Do you have two cars? Can you take two vacations a year?
It starts when you’re younger and grows up with you, in you. And then you are an adult and you find that you undervalue happiness and overvalue this predefined notion of success.
You’ll choose a job that makes others happy, jealous, proud–your parents, your peers, your ex’s and so forth. You tie yourself down, settle in before you’re ready, because its expected.
You never stop and ask yourself–what is success–for me? What is happiness, for me?
So my advice is to step back. Your unhappiness and anxiety in your life, with your decisions, are usually a product of trying to meet someone elses expectations & ideals. Figure out what will make you happy–and make that your goal, your standard of success.
You still got to work to live, but if you’re not happy–well, youre wasting your only life. Happiness should not be ‘optional’ to success.
