Happiness Is Everywhere if You Open Your Eyes
Something to think about
When you are surrounded by negativity, it becomes really damn hard not to be negative as well.
Anytime you open your phone, you hear about someone dying, another war, the market crashing, or something crazy some politician said.
If you are one of those magicians who have managed to get off social media, you still manage to hear it from your friends and family.
With everything you are being fed, it can be hard to find happiness.
I am here to tell you, if you open your eyes, you will find it.
Start by looking with the right lens
Your eyes are open, obviously. But when you stop focusing on misery and finally spot happiness again, it feels like they are opening for the first time.
Let us say this is looking at things with the right lens.
Let me explain.
If we were standing next to each other in a mall, we could be looking in the same direction, but spot different things.
When you are used to spotting the negative things, you naturally start to spot more and more of them. This is a doom loop that will torment you.
Because I spot the positive things, I smile when am see a cute baby in a stroller; you frown because the mom pushing the baby resembles an ex.
This is one of many scenarios throughout your day.
You are on your way to work and focus only on the fact that traffic is bad. You completely missed the sun shining and birds flying above.
At work, you are miserable as you look at the stack of papers you have to go through. So much so that you look past the jokes your favourite coworker is making.
When you get home, your mindset is so negative that instead of being happy that you get to give your wife a big hug, you can only spot that you forgot to move your clothes to the dryer.
All of this could be avoided if you were simply looking at things with the right lens.
It is not easy to shift your vision, but there are some tricks to make it easier.
Force yourself to spot happiness
This is exactly as it sounds. You need to force the habit of spotting happiness.
Go somewhere with the sole intention of looking for happy things.
See what colour birds you can spot, find the cute elderly couple holding hands, and go enjoy the sweet smell of fresh coffee.
By forcing the habit, it will start to come to you naturally.
Look in the right places
Once the habit has begun, at times, you will still catch yourself slipping. This is when you need to ensure you are looking in the right places.
Cheat if you need to.
Instead of taking the path to work that always stresses you out, take one that you know will take you by some happy sights. “The long (but enjoyable) way”.
If you know the rush hour on the way home will stress you out, bring a book with you to work, stay a bit longer and read.
Too exhausted from work? Open Netflix for an hour and watch something happy.
You can literally change your default home page on your internet browser to a happy news website (or my blog(just kidding-ish)). This way, you can’t help but look in the right places.
Skew the odds in your favour.
Happiness is everywhere
The truth is, you can find happiness anywhere you look. Yes, everywhere.
At the mall, there are happy families.
At the airport, people are joyfully reuniting.
In traffic, there is always someone dancing and singing in their car.
At the hospital, someone is happy to see their loved one survive.
Make spotting happiness a habit. I bet that will make you happy.
Thanks for reading