Finding Happiness

I've spent some time recently thinking about my happiness journey. Why I started it, what I have learned about happiness and what the present (versus the past or the future) holds. I think happy memories are wonderful but I don't believe that happiness lives in our past. Looking forward to the future can bring happiness in the anticipation of wonderful possibilities but there are no guarantees. In the present lies your ability to appreciate what is happening as it happens.

I spent a lot of time initially working on my mindset and shifting it out of the past where the things I couldn't change existed. It's funny how much time one can spend revisiting things in the past and wishing they were different. They will never be different. Sometimes that is painful. And sometimes it is freeing. Letting go of the past, accepting that it cannot be changed, can be the step it takes to put you on the road to happiness. 

I've also realized that how you are raised, the environment you grow up in, are big factors in your ability to be happy, to find happiness, to feel joy. I think as we get older we forget that it's the small things that sustain us in happiness. Laughing with friends, rain on a warm spring day, loving those close to us and feeling loved in return.

Happiness is elusive if you are searching for it but it surrounds us all the time if we just open our eyes to see it. What made you happy today?