Yes, you heard that right. Stop. Someone once told me that happiness is never absolute, and I agree. But I also think that happiness is attainable… IF we are willing to let it find us.

That’s right, we have to get out of our own way and ALLOW ourselves to be happy. 

Yet, I feel like happiness has become some type of holy grail feeling. Something unattainable that people can only dream of. A perfect and unbothered state, not worthy of HUMANS. 

And it’s because of this that we cannot possibly achieve it. It’s like when you have heard that Venice is the most beautiful city on Earth and you get there and it doesn’t live up to the hype… you are disappointed. Yet, perhaps if you hadn’t created a false expectation of what Venice was like, you could have allowed yourself to truly enjoy it. 

The same happens with LOVE. What we expect it to be versus what it really is. As well as with relationships and partners, what they should be in our “ideal world” versus what they actually are.

See, if we seek happiness in all its perfect splendor and just get regular happiness with a side of reality, it is impossible to actually be happy. 

So how can we achieve happiness? In my opinion, the first step is to accept that happiness can be made up of beautiful moments sprinkled sporadically into our mundane lives. Can you really be happy when you are annoyed by a customer who is giving you a hard time at your dream job? Probably not, but you can be grateful that you have your dream job and try to remember that it too shall pass. Your smiles will return after the frustrations are over. 

Nothing is absolute. Life is complex and so are we. To expect perfection or absolute happiness is to set yourself up for failure. I guess we have to lower our expectations of happiness and accept it for what it is. Writing this blog post makes me happy. You reading it makes me happy. Throughout our day, many things will make us happy and many might not. It’s up to us to see the overall outcome and decide whether we can be happy in spite of instances that are less than that. 

I choose to be happy. I choose to smile. I choose to not allow negative things completely ruin my happiness, and because of that, I can be happy most of the time. 

I hope you can too.