It’s OK to be busy, but try to remember to follow the rainbow toward happiness, too.
This means in between taking classes, working a job, and balancing everything else in your busy life, you may not always make time for yourself.
While it’s important to be successful, making sure your own happiness is also being satisfied is just — if not more — crucial to a healthy lifestyle.
So leave the daily grind, the paperwork and everything else for a while, and try these ways to maintain happiness as suggested by A.K. Driggs, author of Abandoned in Search of Rainbows.
Driggs, who is no stranger to the uphill battle of finding happiness, says it can be done.
“As a newborn, they found me on a frigid winter’s day inside a brown paper bag left on a toilet seat in a bar-and-grill washroom in upstate New York,” Driggs said. “It would prove to be an inauspicious start for a happy life.”
Fortunately, Driggs was adopted by a loving couple, but other challenges would come her way. She learned how to cope and offers these tips:
Love yourself
Self-acceptance is the first step. We tend to worry about what’s wrong, which makes a certain amount of sense because what’s right doesn’t require attention. Of course, the problem with this paradigm is that we create an inner environment dominated by anxiety. And, ironically, we worry about all the things we tell ourselves that we first have to do to be happy. As a result, we often have that busybody voice perpetually telling us something is wrong, Driggs said.
“Accept that there are things that need to be done – you want to be healthier, find a better job or a long-term romantic partner – but these things don’t have to be accomplished in order to be happy,” Driggs said. “Anxiety is terribly inefficient. There’s no point in worrying about such issues unless you’re actively trying to yield a solution. Accept that you’re in the process of growth, and it’s not so bad.”
Spirituality?
Your spirituality is around your every day. Many people wonder what spirituality means in practical terms. Aside from metaphysical aspects, some define spirituality as self-transcendence, which proves to be extremely valuable in our pursuit of happiness. Again, consider the subliminal voice that’s always telling us things like your hair doesn’t look good enough or you said the wrong thing at the meeting and so forth. Are these concerns anything more than ego traps?
Stay aware
Don’t let go of what makes you happy! No matter how you’ve come across happiness – whether seemingly by accident or after a long, earnest effort – appreciate it by doing it. While that may seem like simple common sense, people lose sight of what makes them happy all the time.
“I found happiness in my spouse; the family that I’ve chosen, my friends; and singing as a recording artist,” she says. Whether it be dancing for fun, sewing, gardening or simply singing to all living creatures, don’t give up what makes you happy.”
Remember, while being successful in business, school and on the job is important, it isn’t what should define your happiness. Some of these tips might help you see things in a different light. Go ahead, start practicing today!
