I recently shared this picture on Facebook and it has really summed up my experience in the last 6-7 months.Through my years in high school, I have struggled with happiness in relationships. I have looked to relationships for my source of happiness. I often look for problems and search until I find them.
During 2015, I made it a goal to be happy. I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Wilson, and attempted to do something similar. It worked really well and I enjoyed it, for the first month before I got super side tracked with college, family, relationships and just life in general.
I have struggled with my own happiness on a few occasions because I often put everyone else’s opinions before my own. I think that I can’t do something that would make me happy, because it would disappoint someone or hurt their feelings.
This April, I bought myself a ring.
I wear it every single day. It is a promise ring, but not in the context that many people think of them as.
I promise that I will put myself first. I will work to achieve MY goals for myself before the goals that other people have presented me with. I will do what it takes to make me happy.
This has been one of the hardest things I have ever done because I am a people pleaser. I want everyone to be happy with me and I hate confrontation.
I will remain friends with someone even if I have nothing in common and it almost makes me miserable, just so I don’t have to deal with hurting their feelings.
I will do things that make other people happy, even if I have no desire to do them.
Some of these things are part of being an adult, but others are just me being a people pleaser and not wanting to hurt people.
I have tried to make this promise before, but from buying myself a ring (then having my mom buy me a different one after the first one turned my finger green), I have a greater accountability for my happiness. I look at my ring every day and remind myself that overall, if people don’t like a decision that I have made, then that is their choice, but I am pretty content with where I am.
I am very proud to say that I have my own apartment and my own hobbies, without having the pressure of a committed relationship right now. The thing that I have truly learned about happiness this year is that when you put your happiness first, other people’s happiness either falls in line with what you want for yourself, or you learn who really cares about you.
I have found that I have a lot more time to do the things that I enjoy and I am over all a lot happier than I was before. I have stopped worrying what people will think as much, and worry about whether something will help me.
I challenge all of you to figure out what would really make you happy in your life and make an effort to consciously choose things that make you happy over things that don’t. This can mean taking things out of your life, but it will be worth it in the long run.
What are some of the promises you make to yourself, that you just need that accountability for?
The Tragic, but Beautiful Things Called Life 