Many experts say that practicing gratitude is a sure-fire way to boost your happiness, highlight your abundance, and generally be a more positive person. When you’re a positive person, it’s easier to be happy. (And happy people don’t shoot their husbands.) It’s a circle, you see. Here are five things to be happy about — even if you aren’t particularly happy today.
Changing of the seasons
Even though I’m a hardXcore summer person and I’m not ready for fall (and subsequently winter), I love when the seasons change. It feels like a fresh start — and anything is possible. Clean slate, yo. It feels good.
Doing at least one thing a day that makes you feel good
Speaking of feeling good… call it self-care or a guilty pleasure, but doing something just because it makes you feel damn good is a great thing. Today, for me, that included cooking myself a good meal, cleaning the counters until they were shiny and not grimy anymore, and treating myself to a glass of wine at a cool bar while I write this. (Spoiler alert: I wrote and scheduled this baby ahead of time.)
Child-like obsession for anything
Anyone who knows me knows I am not a kid person. I am pretty much the un-kidliest person around. But damn if their happiness isn’t infectious. Now, I’m not saying be a creeper at a park or a daycare. But you can harness that happiness.
Have you ever seen Under the Tuscan Sun? Remember when Katherine is drunk and she says, “Never lose your childish enthusiasm”? Kids are all in for whatever occupies their mind at the moment. And they don’t let it go until they get it or figure it out.
Find something akin to that wonder in a child’s eyes, something that is endlessly fascinating to you. Even if it’s just a small tickle deep down. Hold on to that and keep coming back to it. It gets easier to find the more you do it. Learning and growing, or even just laughing, is a wonderful part of the human condition.
Target
Okay, this is kind of a fluffy, give-away point. But Target it the shit. I don’t think I’ve ever walked out of Target unhappy in my grumble-grumble years of going to Target. What is your Target? In other words, what is your “happy place”? That is my point here. Find your happy place and go there often. Be grateful for it.
The fact that you are reading this
You have your eyesight, an internet or cellular connection (and the ability to pay for said connection), and breath to breathe to make it all happen. Trust me, I’m not a “just be thankful you’re alive” kind of person. But I mean…it is something to be grateful for. You woke up today, hopefully in a bed. Or in someone you love’s bed. Or on their couch. Or anywhere that affords eyesight and an internet connection. And you have the ability to choose what you want to read/do/consume.
And really, if things were that bad, reading this post would be the least of your concerns. #perspective
