04/20/2022
Happiness every day for parts of your day? Sure, it’s possible. Happiness every day in conjunction with other emotions? Absolutely. But pure happiness EVERY DAY? 😬🤷♀️🥴
When we hold up happiness as the gold standard of human emotion, we (consciously or subconsciously) encourages ourselves, and others, to bypass the feelings and experiences that may result in something other than happiness… allowing emotions that are NOT happiness to become synonymous with UNhappiness. And if happiness is the goal then unhappiness must be failure.
Here’s the (potentially uncomfortable) truth: Happiness is only wonderful because we feel the other things (sadness, anger, frustration, boredom, uncertainty…). Without a full wheel of emotions in our life, happiness is nothing special and without embracing our capacity to hold more than one emotion at a time, joy (the happiness we CHOOSE) is meaningless.
My challenge for you today is this: When the urge to ignore or bury an emotion that isn’t happiness arises, pause and thank yourself (or God, the universe, or whoever feels right for you!) for the emotion and it’s reminder of your humanity. If you feel safe to do so, allow the feeling to move through you and ground you to the present moment. Rest in knowing that this feeling or emotion will allow you to feel happiness, whenever it next comes, more fully than before!
I’m sending love and grace your way💕
