“Happiness is a Choice.” It’s a phrase we hear so often. Don’t believe me? Check out these quotes that make it sound so simple:

Recently, I wrote about the magic of possibility; I wrote about how I am adjusting my thought process and believing, once again, in the magic that there is a brighter tomorrow to look forward to. So here’s the deal: I’ve been analyzing my life over the past year and as we went through quarantine I found all sorts of ways to keep entertained from baking to cocktail making, movie marathons and every home chore you can imagine. I’ve also seen friends and family members sink in to weeks-long funks and have–admittedly–felt somewhat superior that I didn’t seem to, that I would only have a down day here or there. Usually those days would come after I felt like a crappy person for feeling so smug. I wanted to help those in a bad mental state, but it’s actually sort of rude to look at someone, even someone you love, and say: “Hey! It seems like you’re having a shitty few weeks, have you tried XYZ to get out of it? You know you can just choose to be happy!” Instead, I thought it would be much more polite to just write a blog post and publicly share my advice. Okay, maybe it’s the lawyer in me, or that I’m marrying an engineer that makes me want to fix things… Am I rambling? I’ll get to it.

I lied. I’m not going to get to it.

I do need to explain that this is my personal journey to finding peace through choosing happiness. In case you can’t tell, I’m writing this pretty stream-of-consciousness… it’s a deeply personal topic, so I feel it’s important to share with you my raw, uncut, emotions on the matter. Knowing myself, there will probably be some sort of list that comes out of it, but we’ll see where this entry leads us together. Okay, now I’m going to get to it!

Learning What Peace Really Feels Like to Me

In November, we took a vacation to Maui and drove the Road to Hana, stopping at Wai’ānapanapa State Park and taking in the views of the Black Sand Beach. They might say it’s a black “sand” beach, but it’s actually thousands (millions??) of little rocks and you can hear the waves in the distance crash along the inlet cliffs, and roll in to shore, as they rumble over the pebbles they sound like any other wave, but as the water ebbs & retreats with the tide, the water trickles back through the rocks, sounding like dozens of flowing mini rivers rushing– it’s truly the only way I can think of to describe the sound. I sat like this for more than 10 minutes just listening to the sound, absorbing the colors, and feeling more connected to the universe than I ever have before. I felt real peace and genuine serenity.

I knew this was a feeling that I will chase around the globe for the rest of my life, but, given that we are still in a pandemic, I cannot blow off the next five months to chase down monasteries and remote beaches; so instead, I had to find ways to recreate that peaceful feeling at home.

So lets call that “Choice Number One.”

Learning to Feel Sad & Let It Go

When I say that I “choose happiness,” it could lead someone to believe that I am always jolly and smiley, or that I don’t have ups and downs like an emotionally stable person. “Choosing happiness” doesn’t mean that I’m never sad, in fact, it’s one of my choices to be sad.

I used to be horrible at feeling emotions, at having feelings in general. I used to be the person who kept stuffed animals around so that when a friend cried in front of me, I could hand them a plushie to hold instead giving them a hug, there are real live human beings who will attest to this emotional immaturity (haha). Part of what I would do was burry the negative feelings. I thought: “these feelings don’t bring me happiness, so I’m just not going to feel them.” I was listening to the wrong lesson from Disney’s Frozen, if I concealed my emotions, I wouldn’t feel them. That’s not the lesson here folks; Elsa can’t control her powers until she processes them, she can’t let go of her negative feelings until she acknowledges that they exist. so here’s what I’m choosing to do:

Learning what Brings me Down

I think it’s super important to acknowledge what is brining us down with specificity. I’ve noticed that often my biggest funks come from not being able to identify what’s wrong.

It’s really important for me to identify what specifically is causing my mood so that I can know how to improve it! If I don’t know what the problem is, how can I fix it?? The last thing I try to remember, and why it’s important to specify what’s bumming me out, is to not let that irritation spill in to the rest of my life, & if I know exactly what’s wrong, it’s easier to handle that aspect.

Let’s call that “Choice Number Three,” is that where we are? Are we up to number three?

Finding Serenity at Home

That’s where this journey all started, right? With trying to find that sense of serenity I felt sitting on the beach, with no phone service, and no other people except for Kyle, listening to the thwap thwap of his drone, the whosh of the wind, and the CRASH of the waves on the cliffs… While I haven’t quite gotten there, I have made a few choices that have brought me very close.

That’s not to say that I make Kyle do whatever I want to do. It makes me genuinely happy to do what he wants to do sometimes too, so please know, when I state the next choice, I’m not saying that I place my happiness above his or over the needs of our kitten, or my obligations, but one of the most important choices that I feel a person can make, is to be selfish. That’s Number 4.

While being a Pollyanna isn’t always the best, and of course there are major things going on in the world right now, & I don’t want to promote “toxic positivity.” You will note, at no point do I encourage you to look past the wrongs in the world, I emphasize confronting what negatively affects your mood, I encourage you to be overwhelmed occasionally, but I also remind you that you can choose how to react.

Fight for your happiness!
Seek Sunshine!

If the way to find that sunshine is to fight the wrongs of the world, to volunteer, to learn, to march, to protest, to write, to call senators, to paint signs, to educate others, to do your own research, DO IT! Seek your sunshine! Thrive in the journey to finding your happiness. Be a sunflower, turn toward the light and follow it, whatever direction it may lead you

Learning that the Rest Doesn’t Always work

I think that’s it! That’s where I’d like to end, with my final choice that, when all else fails, fake it ’til you make it.

So I guess we did end up with an enumerated list out of all of that, throughout my journey to serenity to find peace in my daily life, I have found that while it might all boil down “choosing happiness,” it’s harder than it seems & is made up of dozens of choices throughout each day, the six big ones, I suppose we’ve discovered, are: (1) to celebrate past joys, (2) to feel sad, then let it go, (3) to identify what a bummer (4) to be selfish, (5) to seek sunshine, and when all else fails, (6) to fake it!

Where did this all start again? Oh! Yes! While this journey started with my desire to find serenity, I’m sharing it with all of you because I’ve seen a few loved ones fall in to a deep… let’s call it a funk during quarantine & I realize that times are tough and weird and hopefully this will never happen again, but also, whenever I talk to my Grandmom, she always says, “wow kid! you sounds really great, just really happy!” My only thought is of course, my other option is being miserable. It hit me that people might not realize happiness is a choice.

So please, go back up to the top, look at those quotes by famous people from Ancient Greece through Walt Disney himself. I’ve shared with you six choices that I made to chase happiness, 6 choices that I made when I chose to be happy and you know what happened?

I found peace.

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