"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude." ― Denis Waitley
Throughout my 18 years of being on this planet, I've experienced many different feelings. I've experienced grief, loss, sadness, anger, confusion, fear, and pain. I've also experienced hope, love, happiness, and joy.
From being on this planet for almost two decades, I've realized that true happiness doesn't come from objects or places. Like Denis Waitley said in the quote above, happiness comes from within.
Happiness comes from being at peace with your mind. Happiness comes from moments shared with people you love. Often you have to put in work in order to be happy. You need to love yourself. You need to love where you're at in life. You can't put your happiness in other people's hands and you cannot wait for the future to be happy.
You can't say, "In a few years, I'm going to do this and this. Then, I will be happy." You may not be happy 24/7, but true happiness comes when you're at peace with yourself.
It took a lot of time to understand that you can't rely on others or future events to make you happy because, most of the time, they will disappoint. You can only rely on yourself to make you happy.
I've learned that it feels so much better to let the negative energy go than it does to just let it ruin your whole day. In high school, one little negative thing would happen and I would let it keep me in a bad mood all day. Now, I realize that it honestly lifts so much pressure off myself when I allow myself to feel anger or sadness for a few minutes and then just let it go.
Don't hold grudges from something that happened in the past. Forgive and forget. Just like I have, people change. Holding onto something that happened a long time ago won't do anything for you. You'll feel so much better if you don't let a past event torment your mind anymore.
At the end of the day, you're the only one that has control of your feelings. You're the only one that you can rely on. You can choose to let one little thing ruin your day, or you can choose to let yourself feel the bad emotions for a minute or two and then move on.
You can choose to let the anger to consume you or you can choose to let go and be free.
