When I make $10,000, I’ll be happy.
When I travel to all of my bucket list items, I’ll be happy.
When I graduate, I’ll be happy.
When I find the love of my life, I will be happy.
Do these statements sound familiar?
Ever since I was little I had this feeling that happiness was all a mindset. Now don’t get me wrong… I wasn’t a little 10 year old saying “let’s all adjust our mindset.” I just remember being able to look at situations differently. I remember being the target of some bullying and knowing that it wasn’t the end of the world. Not that it wasn’t affecting me, but that I knew I could still be happy from this.
And maybe this was just the stellar way that my parents raised me or maybe I just always knew we could be more if we wanted.
Somewhere along the line, I lost that feeling a bit and I fell into the trap of comparing my happiness to things other people had. Thinking, well if I had that much success I would be happy too or if I was that pretty I could be happy all the time also.
I can’t blame myself, as a young adult in America it is so easy to be subjected to this material happiness. And it wasn’t until recently I remembered that I could be happy every day and it would start with myself.
And with that included not gauging my happiness by my successes or wins. Not creating false happiness only when I knew something good was going to happen. But creating happiness within me every day.
You have every single tool you need to be happy every day. And when you are basing your happiness on a milestone, in reality you will never find that happiness because there will always be more.
Happiness is a choice, not a result.
