“For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world works in mysterious ways; never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought to find myself experiencing the loss of a child. Growing up, it almost seemed like the world was made of marshmallows and bad things only happened in the movies. So when my daughter died, my life came to a halt. My ideals changed and I became cynical, dismal and felt very sorry for myself. I lost who I was and everything that I had ever wanted in life seemed to dissipate with her loss. And I would like to say that I snapped out of it, but to be honest the grief and pain didn’t subside for what seemed like forever. I spent a large portion of my first couple years following her death hiding from the world and in denial of what happened to me.
But something changed. Something happened that I didn’t foresee coming my way. I woke up one morning and made the choice to be happy. I literally sat up in my bed and decided I was going to stop living my life without purpose. In that moment I made the executive decision to live each day with as positive and as happy of a mood as I could. I was so tired of being sad. I longed to enjoy the birds chirping and the early morning sunrise; I had missed out on so much of life. I couldn’t waste one more minute in my vortex of depression.
How I did this you might ask? It is this simple, each time that I felt myself gravitating towards the darkness I would take several deep breaths (as many as it took) to clear my mind. I would feel my brain releasing the negative thoughts and would redirect my brain to anything that would improve my mood. Sometimes I would focus on my favorite dish to eat, other times I would focus on how much I loved my dog. It was sometimes as easy as turning my brain to a favorite movie scene; I would redirect and force my brain to think positive.
And at first this was something I had to do constantly, I had to convince and train my brain to react how I wanted because for so long I allowed the sadness to fill me. I would focus on training my brain in the car, at work and even among crowds of people. Trust me, this process didn’t take place without pangs of overwhelming anxiety here and there. But in just a matter of a few weeks I saw an immense difference, an immense change. I was someone that I never thought I could be.
I would be absolutely lying to say that I still don’t have bad days, because we all do. That is life. But I noticed people starting treating me differently, I noticed that I was always smiling without realizing it or having to make the conscious effort, I was invited to more things and would wake up each morning excited for the day rather than dreading it.
I generally would like to think that the world is a good place, despite all of the bad that happens around us. But to take it even further than that, I believe that people can teach themselves to be happy over living a life of just going through the motions. I stand by this wholeheartedly. Happiness is a choice and until you go through the process of forcing yourself to be happy, you will continue to live a monotonous life. It is something you will have to work at time to time but you will see a change in yourself that you didn’t even think possible. So take the plunge and give this a go! You deserve to live the life you desire.
With all of that being said, why wouldn’t you love to live a life of utter happiness every single day?
