Monday Mo – Finding Your Happy Life

Camilla Eyring Kimball – “You do not find the happy life, you make it.”

This week’s Monday Mo was written by Maggie Stringham, Senior Account Manager at Spot On Solutions.

Have you read all of the quotes and articles online about this very notion? There are a ton! I did a Google Search for “How To Be Happy” and got 6,160,000,000 results. That is seriously a lot of information on something that should come so naturally to us all. But it doesn’t.

Stress, worries, fear, pain – these are just an insignificant number of words that we use to describe the varying states of discontent and unhappiness that annihilate happiness in our lives. I believe Camilla Eyring Kimball when she says “you do not find the happy life, you make it.” But, I also believe that’s perspective.

Article after article on Google’s search engine has tips on how to make a happy life. We are advised to practice yoga and other self-care activities, compliment ourselves, don’t attach happiness to achievements and awards, some articles said to substitute chasing goals with chasing happiness….. which is ultimately what we want to avoid?!

It is so complicated! Do this – don’t do this! Meditation is the only way! Spend time doing the things that bring you joy! If you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life!

These are all FANTASTIC pieces of advice, but they really don’t tell you how to find the happiness inside of these things.

If you don’t like working, then nothing that you do is really going to make you feel like you love your job. Think about it. If you feel that working is too restrictive and takes away your freedom, you’re probably never going to love work and working will probably never make you happy.

Your perspective MUST shift. You must be able to view your work differently and find the joy in it. Finding happiness, making happiness, creating happiness – it’s all the same thing. The ultimate key to happiness is changing your attitude.

If you wake up every day saying “Ugh – I don’t want to go to work today” then you are never going to want to go to work. You are telling yourself a story that your attitude falls in line with.

But if you wake up every day saying “Hurray – I get to go to work today. I’m so lucky that I have a job and I can make money to pay my bills and to eat” your entire perspective of your job is shifting, your approach to your day shifts, your attitude about life eventually shifts.

I know this because I was a terribly, terribly depressed person when I was younger. I was drowning in anxiety and the idea that my life had such little value. The world was big and full of amazing people, and I was a tiny speck of dirt contributing nothing to humanity. It was cold and lonely. I hated waking up.

Recently I dropped my kids off at daycare and one of the staff said “try to have a good day at work today” and immediately I said “Oh I don’t have to try – I always have a great day at work!”

And that wasn’t a lie or an attempt to be make the day a good day – but it took a while to get to that place. I had to change the story in my head about my life and my approach to it – and I did it all by practicing gratitude all day, every day. Even for the hardships – and it worked. I dedicated my time and energy into finding the happiness in everything, the beauty in the pain, the joy in life no matter what it looks like.

I’m not saying it is easy – but it is so worth it.