In our quest for happiness and a sense of peace, we often focus on the things that we feel will make us happy. Sometimes we go astray and grasp at straws, especially during some of the more difficult times in our lives. While it’s important to know what makes us happy, it’s also important to recognize what happiness isn’t.
Happiness Isn’t an End Goal
Happiness isn’t some distant place you’re trying to reach as you go through every single day of your life. Happiness is here and now, in what you do every single day. No day is perfect, but no series of days should be spent hoping for a better day in the future when you are perfectly capable of controlling what is happening in your life today and tomorrow.
Happiness isn’t a Lack of Negativity
We wish it was, but even the happiest people have negative experiences, bad days, and emotional ups and downs. They experience loss, they seek gratification, and they sometimes fall short of their own expectations. A few negative hiccups in your life doesn’t mean you’re an unhappy person. It means you’re human. Brush yourself off and move on.
Happiness Isn’t Always Huge
Happiness doesn’t have to come in the form of a major life milestone. Did you have a particularly good cup of coffee this morning? Score one for happiness! Did you get an email from an old friend? Score two! How about finishing that article you were struggling to write, or that really good joke you heard? Small yet happy moments in your life count; and they become huge when you string them together and start to look at them as part of the collective whole that is your life.
Don’t get so caught up in your ideas of what happiness is that you lose sight of the real, happy moments you experience daily!
