Happiness Is About Connection And Gratitude
I'll never forget the moment when I learned that we all need connection, appreciation, and love to be happy.
It was on a warm spring morning outside of the beautiful town of Brasov in Transylvania (the region my family is from). This feeling was only amplified by the sights and smells of Romania's hillsides. I was sitting at an outdoor café with a close friend and talking about my recent breakup.
We were sipping organic tea while eating rich sticky Romanian cakes when she said something so simple but so profound: “Happiness is about connection and gratitude”.
She said this as if it were the most obvious thing; something so simple and common that everyone already knows. This simple phrase shattered my entire belief system and put me in a state of complete amazement.
Because I was raised in a ‘helicopter Dad' environment; where everything is supposed to be well planned and so perfect, I grew up believing that happiness only happens for those who are privileged enough to be blessed with wealth, family, education, or good looks. She had just proven to me the exact opposite of what I was taught.
She had proven to me that happiness is not something that comes from the outside, but something we create and build within ourselves. She had shown me the truth of what I believed all along; that happiness doesn't come from good fortune or luck, but from our willingness to love and connect with others.
Happiness is an internal state of being; not something we get through things or currency in the world. To find such a simple thing as this gave me so much relief – as though my soul was finally getting a chance to breathe after years of suffocation. I had finally discovered something all my rich friends, good looks and intelligence hadn’t been able to get me. I had found the secret to happiness.
I now have this belief that everyone has the potential to be happy unless they are suffering from a psychological illness or have experienced a lot of trauma. No one knows what they don't know and it is impossible to know what you've never had, thus it is our responsibility as parents, siblings, friends and individuals to share this with others so that we can build a foundation for life based off happiness and positivity versus fear of death or pain; a structure of happiness versus ego.
I am well aware that happiness is not a right but rather a privilege. Privilege comes to those who are lucky enough to be born into a supportive and loving family or have the inner strength to create one of their own and privilege comes in many forms.
Happiness is a choice we make starting by opening our eyes, hearts, minds and souls and choosing to look for the positive instead of the negative, choosing to think happy thoughts instead of believing everyone is out to get us or that we are all alone in this world – rather than believing that we are connected to everyone and everything on this planet by thought alone. When you're truly awake you can see how all things are possible through belief in miracles and positivity.
In my own personal journey to happiness, I have learned that our happiness is not static; it does not come from just thinking happy thoughts or being more positive. Although it is important that you are positive and think happy thoughts, the reason why you're happy isn't because of these things, but because of what you do with those thoughts. The reason for the healing process begins by finding yourself and loving who you are; recognizing the flaws in yourself rather than judging yourself and confirming that you are enough through gratitude. If you have the courage to love and respect yourself – you will find that your happiness becomes more solidified and tangible.
When I felt my happiness crumble, it was because I had let myself go on a mental journey which was full of me vs. everything else; me being bad, me being weird and me being ‘different'. This journey would always end in tears, pain, pain and more pain; with this belief that I was unlovable.
This fueled my ego way too much – which is why it became a self-fulfilling prophecy because as soon as I convinced myself that I wasn't enough or worth loving, all of these things began to show up throughout my day. I didn't realize that in the moments when I was most broken or felt the worst – I was sending out a signal to everyone that I wasn't enough and that they didn't need to love me, because of this I would push people away.
This became an endless cycle of pushing people away so that they wouldn’t reject me (which would confirm my belief that I wasn’t good enough) and then getting upset about it because why did I push them away. All of this created a loop which never let me find myself; it also never allowed anyone to love me either.
I spent the majority of my teenage years chasing boys who would never love me back, hating my body and trying to find myself. I was constantly thinking that if I could just lose weight or have a better body – everything would be okay. I believed that happiness meant being thin and beautiful; that it was unattainable if I was not these things.
Ironically this caused me to gain more weight in an attempt to hide her true feelings of self-loathing and disgust, which only happened because of my lack of self-love. This endless cycle continued until one morning when I woke up and realized that no matter how much weight I gained or lost, no man would ever find me attractive while they were inside my mind. This was because my mind was full of insecurity, constant self-loathing and insecurity.
Happiness is not being thin; happiness is not being beautiful or smart; happiness is not having the right clothes, or having the perfect job or material things or even being perfect in your family. All of these things can come and go, but happiness only comes from within. Happiness doesn't exist elsewhere; we create it with thoughts, actions and what you believe to be true. Happiness is a choice we must constantly make as a human being until our last day on Earth which I believe to be in a couple decades from now.
Finding happiness is a process of letting go, knowing that you are enough – right here, right now and that there is no one that can take this away from you; therefore, you should never allow anyone to do this. Happiness becomes our own journey and we cannot expect anyone to make us happy or choose it for us. For my entire life I had been expecting other people to make me happy, until I learned that they couldn't because happiness begins with us. Happiness is not something you get from the world; it is something you give to yourself. It has taken me years of self-learning to truly understand what happiness means for me as an individual and I believe that it will take others years as well.
Conclusion:
What I have learned is that we are all on the same journey – a journey of self-discovery and healing so that you can release the blocks, blocks to happiness and dovetail into the life you want to live. When we think happy thoughts, it doesn't mean that you're making everything ok; it means just that you're thinking about something happy. As long as you're doing what you can with what you have and letting go of anything negative – your inner light will shine through. Your happiness will start to come naturally when you stop thinking negatively and worry if it will ever come naturally again. Self-love is not in your control; it is in your mind, heart and soul.