Happy By Choice

I posted this photo on Instagram last week, in lieu of my usual Happiness posts, and this week I’m still thinking it.  Some things are so simple to say and so hard to believe, don’t you think?  It is quite simple to let circumstances or what other people say/do or don’t say/do determine your mood for the day.  But the more I grow, the more I learn that adventure & happiness & our general life mood is determined more by our own decisions than by all that external stuff.  And oh man, some days I feel way farther from that simple truth than others.

We’re all going to have easy days and hard days.  We’re all going to have times where everything goes our way, and days when nothing seems to.  We’re all going to see incredible dreams fulfilled, and face incredible disappointment.  Happy doesn’t have to be a roller coaster of good days and bad days.  Happy doesn’t have to follow me when I’m traveling to far away places, and doesn’t have to stay there when I return to the constancy of home.  I’m learning that happy isn’t an extreme emotion.  And that life, in itself, is the greatest of adventures.

I think happy is a simple appreciation for who you are, a calm confidence in that identity – whatever surrounds you.

I think happy can be a constant contentedness.

That is, if you choose it to be.

{ Image by Annabelle Mintz }