Purpose Driven Happiness

Today I was thinking about happiness, or the lack thereof.  For most of our lives we’re told by our parents, our teachers, our peers, “I just want you to be happy.”  But what is real happiness?  Real happiness is a positive state of mind and the ability to gleam the good from just about any situation.

It is true that people who smile more tend to be happier than those who don’t.  You can, in essence, make yourself happy by pretending to be happy.  You know, like the old adage: fake it until you make it.  That’s pretty true about happiness…most of the time.   

But sometimes it can be hard to find happiness.  You have to want to be happy in order to be happy.  You have to strive for happiness.  So many people I know say having faith in God provides them happiness.  They put their trust in a superior being, and it lifts the unhappiness from them.  That doesn’t work for me.    

For me happiness is defined by a sum of its parts.  Way back last year or two years ago, when I started this blog I was unhappy.  I look back at that time, and I think it’s because I had no direction.  I was content in feeling “blah,” only I wasn’t really content.  I was seriously unhappy.  I had no purpose—no direction.  I was sitting around feeling intensely sad, and I wasn’t doing anything about it.  Wallowing in your sorrow will only make you more sorrowful.  It won’t help dig you out of it.

I decided, with the help of friends and family, to find a purpose.  I think a lot of people find that purpose in God, but not me.  I prefer to find a purpose in something solid, some goal I can attain, something I can strive to achieve.  For me, I found that purpose in writing.  I started writing every day.  I started making changes in my lifestyle: losing weight, exercising, writing.  All of these things, once I realized how achievable they were, seemed to give me a purpose for my existence. 

I started realizing the more I was happy, the more other people in my life were happy.  The more happiness I felt, the better off the kids.  Now, looking back, I can’t believe I spent so many years on the couch wallowing in my own misery.  I wasted a lot of time doing nothing, when I could have been doing something.  But, you know, hindsight is like foresight without a future.  There’s no point in looking back at things that cannot be changed.  There’s no point in wishing something could be that cannot be.  There’s only a point in setting a goal for the future, driving yourself with a purpose, and achieving that purpose so you can find happiness and fulfillment.  At least, that’s what works for me.