I was recently given some extremely wise advice from an even wiser man: my dad. I was having a very emotional morning. It was one of those where the thought of getting out of bed to face the day makes you wish you could curl back into your blissful sleep, where you feel like the moment your feet touch the ground will be the moment your life spirals out of control.
Naturally, as the independent, self-sufficient adult that I am, my only possible option was to call up my parents and beg them to tell me what I should do. My dad told me this: There will always be things in your life that will be out of your control. There will always be something you’ll wish you could change that you won’t be able to. But, you do have control over your own happiness. So, he said, get out there and do what makes you happy.
What my dad said seemed so simple in the moment, but once I hung up the phone I asked myself the question, “what makes me happy?” and I realized, pretty quickly, that I had no idea.
Sometimes, we spend so much time focused on school, on relationships, on jobs, or on just trying to keep our lives together that we forget what makes us happy. We become so focused on achieving our goals and following our dreams that we completely forget to enjoy the process of doing so. While we are busy doing other, less important things, we begin to forget how to put our own happiness and, ultimately, ourselves first.
When we choose to go to college, we think, “If I go to college, I will get a job that will make me money. Then I’ll be happy.” When relationships end we say, “I need to find somebody else. Then I’ll be happy.” When we are faced with challenges, we assume, “I just need to get through this and then I will be happy.” But, happiness shouldn’t be our end goal, it should be the way we live our lives. We deserve to be happy every single day, and it is our individual duties to treat ourselves better and to figure out what makes us happy so we can do so.
This is what I realized when I asked myself the question, “what makes me happy?” It scared me to death that I had gone so long without knowing, and so I decided in that moment that it was time for me to search myself to find out. Now, I won’t bore you with what I found, but I will tell you that having this conversation with myself changed my attitude towards life for the better.
So, what makes you happy? Is it reading or writing? Is it listening to music, or maybe making it? Is it being with your family or spending time with your friends? Is it being outdoors or playing a sport? Is it helping those in need? Is it traveling, or is it coming back home? Whatever it is that makes you happy, find it, and do it.
