Most of us believe that we will “achieve” happiness as if it is just a task like walking up a flight of stairs. You get to the top and whew, you’ve gotten yourself to the top of the stairs.
But if you want a more lasting and meaningful feeling of contentment, joy and purpose the idea of happiness has to be seen in a different light. Think of happiness as a state of well being that comes from living the good life. It’s a constant day in, day out endeavor that guides decisions and actions.
So, living a happy lifestyle doesn’t mean flitting from one hedonistic pleasure to the next, just to chalk them up off your list of things. Thinking of happiness as an achievement creates a feeling of urgency and obligation that directly contradicts the whole purpose. I notice that some people book up their weekends so tight with activities and no rest that they come to work on Monday exhausted. And what did they have to show for all that?
The actions you choose to experience happiness do not have a formulaic prescription that you just follow. While allowing the experiences of others to inspire your life, it’s important not to compare or compete with others in this area. Social media is famous for provoking these meaningless races with carefully curated displays of the absolute highlights of someone’s life, causing us to forget that nobody’s life is just perfect sunshine and roses all the time. And this can lead to unnecessary stress. And we know what stress does to the body.
A long time ago, I experienced a type of depression that was fueled by my social media use. There were a few people who would always show up on my screen doing every thing and going to every place I wished I could. I began to think to myself that my life sucks. All I did was go to work, come home, take care of the home and family and go to bed, day in and day out. I didn’t have the means to drop everything in my life and go gallivanting all around the world having maximum fun. It took an epiphany when I saw one of those people in person (who I knew personally but didn’t live near me) to realize that they had fucked up shit going on in their life that I had no idea about. So, I thought that I would never actually want to trade places with this person and it made it much easier for me to get back to reality and focus on my own happiness.
A happiness lifestyle can be intuitive, spontaneous, exhilarating or relaxing. It can be made up of geeky or quirky things that just make you feel good inside. You can get your dose of joy from actually sitting down doing absolutely nothing. Or very little like watching the sun set, smelling the spring air, or just standing in dewy grass. There is a huge range of possibilities for getting little daily doses of joyfulness and this should be freeing. There’s no need to overthink it or fill up your calendar with events you don’t even feel like going to.
It seems strange that we would even be contemplating the ways to create a lifestyle full of joy that supports our overall well being, but here we are. But we should not take this as a reason to ridicule ourselves and our lives. It should be more like a return to basics, time to rest and permission to tune out the external noise and listen to our inner voice that will lead us where we want to be.
