Everyone is told in life that, one day, they will be happy. One day when they have a good job, with lots of money, married to the person they love, and in a house they enjoy — they will be happy. This seems like a lot of standards to be happy, and also standards that are not easily reachable for every person on this planet.

Sometimes, those of us who are blindsided by our mental illnesses- or even just those of us in general who don't feel happy — feel the exact opposite of what happiness is supposed to feel like, and we don't feel like we can ever be happy. Mental illnesses have this way of taking over our minds and bodies, creeping into every captivity and making themselves at home inside of us so that we see and breathe nothing but these mental illnesses. We are so bogged down by them that we often times lose hope, and see no light at the end of the tunnel.

So when added on, this extra pressure that we cannot be happy if we don't live up to what people tell us will make us happy — love, a house, a career — we are even more consumed by this sadness and stuck in this loop of no hope.

But, the thing is, no one on this planet can be extremely happy in the exact same way. Everyone is told that something will make us happy, but how do we know what that "happy" feels like? All we get about being happy is what people tell us, that "one day we will be happy," that we can only be happy with good jobs and when we are in love and living in huge houses that would take our whole lives to pay off. It's basically just become this giant euphoria that everyone knows can exist possibly one day, but no one knows how to achieve it.

So instead of working towards happiness in the way that everyone else tells us too, we should start working towards it for ourselves. Happiness could be waking up in the morning, making yourself coffee and staring out the window looking at the scenery and just being okay with the fact that you woke up. For once, not letting your mental illnesses take over and make you wish you hadn't woke up, or not letting them take over your body and letting you sleep all day. You got up. That could be happy for you.

Take your day to day accomplishments and turn them into something good enough for your own standards of happiness. Do not listen to everyone else's versions of happiness, create your own. Do things that are going to make you happy. Do not strive to make happiness and end goal, but a day to day goal so you can actually feel happiness for as long as you can. Make happiness what you want it to be. Engulf yourself into all that your definition of happiness has to offer and you just may find that all along, you have had the capability to be happy and you didn't even know it.

Do not let mental illnesses or life struggles or anyone else win. Be happy for you. Be happy today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your life.

When happiness seems out of reach, grab it for yourself and make it exactly what you want and hold onto that tightly.