“People wait all week for Friday, all year for summer, and all their life for happiness.” With that being said: let’s say we’re in the midst of a sunshiny Friday afternoon on June 21st, aka the summer solstice, aka the first day of summer, aka the longest day of the year. It’s the start of the weekend, the start of summer and a day of seemingly endless hours to spare. Does that mean you’re instantly submerged in an overwhelming sense of contentment and bliss? As the previous quote states, it’s essentially everything we’ve been waiting for. It’s in a sense, what we anticipated would be the start of our happiness.

When things aren’t how we imagine they would be we mope, we wait, we hope someday serendipity will cross our path and things will turn around, but we don’t do, we don’t initiate, we don’t prescribe our own happiness.

             Lately, I’ve been expanding my concentration of health and wellbeing to include more of a focus on mental health, and how to maintain and enhance a healthy mindset. This includes the act of choosing happiness. Charming, isn’t it? The simplistic idea of deciding you are going to be happy seems naive and out of our control. While there are occurrences in which under some circumstances we cannot control a given situation, there will always be factors we can change in regards to how our mind responds to it.

I’ve concluded that our determination of happiness is reliant on three things:

1.) What we prioritize

2.) The people we surround ourselves with

3.) Our coping mechanism of choice when things go wrong.

I’ve also concluded our fault in inducing happiness when it comes to these three things:

1.) Priorities: we don’t always got ‘em in check.

2.) People: It only takes one Debbie downer to damper your mood, and one negative Nancy to dull your outlook on life.

3.) Blaming yourself, blaming others, resorting to spitefulness, envy, jealously, and cutting down others for having what you wish you had.

How to create your own happiness:

• Be other’s happiness. Finding the good in other people’s situations will help you find the good in yours.
• Challenge yourself to think in a bigger perspective. We tend to allow our minds to be manipulated according to what we see as important. Oddly enough, sometimes it takes a bigger issue to come along, in order to allow ourselves to abandon an issue that originally drained our energy and constantly occupied our thoughts. Sometimes we need a wakeup call as to what is really important in the scheme of life.
• Use what you see as downfalls to grow, the best thing about obstacles is that we will overcome them. Turns out Kelly Clarkson was on to something with the terribly cliché “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”
• Create an environment that will support your positive thinking. Fill your room with things you love, keep your favorite things around, & indulge in the little things in life.
• Be selfish. Make yourself a priority, do yourself favors. Treat yourself with endorphins and healthy food. Don’t deprive yourself of what your body needs for the sake of convenience or comfort.

I can say with complete honesty that I am happier than I have ever been. There is no better feeling than being completely in love with your life and where it is right now. Of course there is always room for improvement, but how beautiful is that? There will always be room for improvement in every aspect of our lives, which means it only gets better from here. Striving for happiness is a continuing progress, and our lives are an ongoing project. Choose to see the better in every situation, and the situation will get a little bit better.

It’s a good day to have a good one.

-Alena Purpero