on happiness

I read an article in the Globe today called 'Are you Happy?'.

Well readers - are you?

When asked, the answer to that question for me is a genuine yes.

I like my life. I have a wonderful family, a beautiful daughter, incredible lifelong friendships, amazing new friends, a job that challenges me, and I am fairly sure I am a good human being (as I've said before - flawed, severly flawed) but a desire to be good, better ...

... indeed I have all the necessary items to be able to say that I am genuinely happy.

Does this mean that I do not have hurt in my life? Of course I do. I have anxiety and stress. I have longings that go unfulfilled. I have days where I am unsure of myself and my place in the world. Some days I do not know my purpose and if I should even have one other than enjoying my life.

And there is pain, plenty of it. These things, I am told, are a part of life.

Something I've learned along the way is that it is the moments, the single snapshots of your day/life that add up to make it a good life. My mom is a great proponent of doing what you need to do in the moment to make yourself happy.

Looking back on those crazy moments when I feel insane with hurt or am so stressed I cannot see a way out and I dont know what to do I recognize that I have the power in those moments to say to myself "What do I need right NOW to make me happy in this moment" and to take the results of that question and proactively seek out that happiness. When I dont do that for myself, I have nobody to blame but myself.

It is hard mantra to follow in certain [most? some? =))]situations and I fail miserably sometimes [often, always, never, sometimes =)))] (nice try Kel, more like OFTEN!) ... But I do recognize that I have the power in my own hands to be happy, to enjoy my life and to be in charge of making the choice to be happy. It is just that, a decision.

One of the lines in the article reads (and hits home with me):

"The state of the world is often annoying. But maybe you've been too busy channelling positive energy to notice. Freud certainly wasn't. The father of modern psychology thought that humans weren't meant to feel consistently happy, since "all the regulations of the universe run counter to it." And yet somewhere along the line we forgot Freud and embraced Tony Robbins."

it goes on to say:

"The problem with the culture of incessant happiness is that it's one of the things that drives social dissatisfaction, you're asked to take yourself as a constant self-improvement, and frankly this never ending quest is exhausting."

I'd be interested to 'hear' your opinions on this subject. Those two paragraphs hit home, then they didn't then I went back around again. Doesn't matter. What do you think??