So I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos recently, an one of my favorite people to watch, Nikki Phillippi, is doing a series this month called "How to be happy January". And that is actually something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I'm the kind of person who is very happy if everything is good, but once things starts getting a little rougher I'm not exactly a ball of sunshine. It doesn't have to be anything major at all, but it really affects not only my mood, but also the mood of people around me. I have a tendency to always look either to the past or to the future and never really enjoying my life right now. I will think about how good my life was last year or a couple of years ago, or I'll say to myself that in a few years everything will be a lot better, when I only have achieved that goal and gotten those things and so on. I've realized that this is not the way that I want to live my life, and that I am never going to be fully happy with anything later on if I can't enjoy my life right now.
"If you're not enjoying the journey you probably won't enjoy the destination"
- Joe Tye
There is nothing wrong with my life. I am not sick, I have a loving family that I am very close to, the greatest boyfriend and a handful of really good friends, a nice apartment and I'm taking a pretty good education. So what is there not to be happy about?
If you had asked me that question a little while ago, not that long at all actually, I would probably have named a dozen different things. But at the end of the day I've realized that these things are only minor details. Life is never 100% perfect, but that's just.. well, life. I am not going to be happy sitting around and waiting for my life to be perfect, because it never will be. But I've also realized that it's pretty darn close. So that is going to be my new years resolution this year. I am going to appreciate the things that are in my life right now and spend my time doing things that make me happy. I am not saying that I will go crazy and do fun stuff all the time, but I am going to try to focus on the positive and not the negative, which shouldn't be that hard as there are way more positive than negative in life.
I realize that you shouldn't just ignore your problems, but that's not really what this is about. I'm a big believer in solving problems contra ignoring them, but dealing with problems is a different thing than drowning in them.
And I also have the "regular" resolutions.. To be more active, eat healthily, be more organized, study regularly and so on, but I feel like all of these tie back to being happy. These are all things that I know will make me feel better and happier if I keep them up. If I work out regularly and eat food that's good for me, I know that it will affect my mood and how I feel. I will feel a lot better, both physically and mentally, and will therefore also be happier.
As any other new year's resolution I probably won't be able to keep this up every second of every day. I'll have days where I just want to crawl back into bed and stay there. But I feel like when your attitude toward something changes your actions will follow, and hopefully I will have a lot fewer "down-days" and a lot more good days as the year progress.
So, if you're still reading.. What are your new years resolutions? And what do you do to be happy?
