Happy First day of Spring – Go Pursue Happiness

Happiness is an interesting concept. It is something we all desire and yet it is a state of mind that few can completely articulate. What is happiness?

I learned as a child that I was entitled to the right to pursue happiness. Like many American children, I believed that meant I was entitled to happiness. I could ramble on and on about the ills of our societal belief that we are entitled to be happy, but I won’t, perhaps I’ll rant about that later. What I am coming to accept is that happiness comes in the pursuit. We must actively seek happiness. Happiness doesn’t just come and find you.

For the past several months I have been guilty of demanding to be happy. And, to be quite honest, of being angry when anything ‘made’ me unhappy! I wasn’t pursuing happiness, I was demanding that happiness come and overtake my life. Needless to say I was not happy! And neither were a lot of people around me.

Yesterday, completely by accident, I stumbled across a blog post: 10 Counterintuitive Tips For Being Happier I almost didn’t click on the link because I thought ‘what kind of hogwash is this?’

Instead I found an A-HA moment.

I won’t share what Gretchen Rubin says in her blog, you can click and read. Gretchen’s number one tip says to start by doing simple things like going to bed (ie get enough sleep) and don’t get too hungry. These are things that I need to be better about doing, EVERYDAY!

The second and ninth tips are the ones that really speak to me and I want to share them with you:

2. Do let the sun go down on anger.

I had always scrupulously aired every irritation as soon as possible, to make sure I vented all bad feelings before bedtime. Studies show, however, that the notion of anger catharsis is poppycock. Expressing anger related to minor, fleeting annoyances just amplifies bad feelings, while not expressing anger often allows it to dissipate.

9. Stop nagging.

I knew my nagging wasn’t working particularly well, but I figured that if I stopped, my husband would never do a thing around the house. Wrong. If anything, more work got done. Plus, I got a surprisingly big happiness boost from quitting nagging. I hadn’t realized how shrewish and angry I had felt as a result of speaking like that. I replaced nagging with the following persuasive tools: wordless hints (for example, leaving a new lightbulb on the counter); using just one word (saying “Milk!” instead of talking on and on); not insisting that something be done on my schedule; and, most effective of all, doing a task myself. Why did I get to set the assignments? I found it hard to give up nagging—in fact, I came up with 19 strategies to try to cure myself of the nagging habit.

Happy First day of Spring – Go Pursue Happiness