Being You and Being Happy

-
This past weekend I heard a friend of mine say something that really stuck with me. She was talking about a previous relationship and made an excellent point when she said: "You have to learn how to be happy alone." Although this seems like something that should come naturally, we live in a society where we depend on others to be happy. We are constantly leaning on our relationships to make sure we are happy.

A specific example of this is how we seem to think that we need to find that one person that will complete us and fulfill our dreams of living happily ever after. And some people are in too much of a hurry to find this person that they reach out to anyone who will throw them a bone. I'm not saying this is wrong, but it's hard to be completely happy with that one person if you don't know how to be happy just being you and doing your own thing.

It seems simple, but we get caught up in life and forget about how important it is to find our own happiness. We cannot let others find it for us. That's our job. Like my good pal Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "We must be our own before we can be another's." This is so incredibly true. We must figure out who we are and how to love life on our own before we can find that happiness with someone else. Take charge of your life.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

See ya, 2016.

-
I should have just gone to bed the night before I flew back to Minnesota for Christmas Vacation. Instead, I read through my journal for 2016 and then I spent the whole night digesting every thought I had over the course of the year and got ZERO sleep. Sometimes it feels silly to have a journal. It feels like I'm reverting back to the 6th grade girl who writes about the boy she likes and the fight she had with her dad. But mostly, it's a great way to remind myself of my experiences and my feeling about those experiences. My journal is filled with memories, ideas, quotes from books, tidbits from conversations with the people I love the most, lists, and life plans. Much like running, writing things down helps me try to understand life. (Way cliche, but way true.) As I reflected on this year, I relived my feelings. My heart hurt thinking about my most recent heartbreak, but it also swelled with joy as I read the list of people who helped me through it. I remembered the incred...
Read more

Thoughts on Expectations

-
The world would be such a different place if there were no expectations. There would be so much less disappointment. When you think about it, most disappointment stems from some sort of expectation. We wouldn’t fail because we couldn’t expect something to be better than reality. I know that this is fairly negative thinking and there is a completely different side to the idea of expectations but I challenge you to look at things in a different light. Imagine life as a child who knows nothing, expects nothing of the world. They live their lives in constant wonder. Life is a one big surprise to them. How cool is that? If we expect nothing from a day, then waking up is a miracle in itself. If you don’t expect anything, then every moment is a wonderful surprise and we can’t help but to be filled with joy. “Instead of filling with expectations, the joy-filled expect nothing and are filled.” If we learn to control how much we expect from the world, then every good thi...
Read more

Adventure Time

-
As I sit in the airport, by myself, after a few weeks of relaxing at home, I’m pretty excited to take off on my next adventure-- excited and also incredibly terrified. On one hand, this is a great opportunity and I’m sure it is an experience I will cherish forever. I get to take a break from the norm. I get to spend a significant amount of time across the country surrounded by people who are presumably fun and outgoing (I’m making this assumption based on the fact that we all want to spend our entire summer hanging out with kids). I get to try new things. I get to eat fresh lobster. I get to try logrolling. I get to hang out with kids and play volleyball on the beach of a gorgeous lake. Not only is Maine supposedly breathtakingly beautiful, but it’s different from everything I know. It’s outside of my comfort zone.   On the other hand, leaving your comfort zone is a terrifying thought. I’m leaving everything I have ever known. Although it is only for two months, this is tw...
Read more