November 24, 2013

Thoughts on: Happiness

 
Let's be honest, being happy is the most important thing in life, am I right? Anyone who says something else would be, well, kinda weird. I constantly find my self asking 'what makes me happy?' and I have a huge list of things that do (of course I also have a list about that kind of things!!). But to be honest, it's hard always doing things of this list, most of the time because of a lack of time. And seriously, why do I have to follow a list? Can't you just find happiness in your everyday life?


That's something my mum always tells me: "Stop overthinking everything and enjoy the little things". Yeah well, that's difficult for me. I don't know about you guys, but I tend to overthink everything, mainly because I am very unconfident with myself and just a little thing like a friend who went to another friend without telling me can put me out of balance. I then immediately start thinking about what I possibly could have done wrong, almost always concluding that I am boring and no one wants to hang out with me. Which is, of couse, bullshit. I know that. But I still get very sad.
This morning I was reading a very interesting article about happiness and it got me thinking about how I live my life.
This article questioned our constant search for happiness stating that "The problem with happiness is not that we do not have enough. Who could be happier than people who live in peace and safety and sexual freedom? The problem is that we constantly analyse our lifes. [...] We make ourselves unhappy, just because we are not constantly happy." And they are right! I constantly analyse my life, what I could improve and what I should change. But is that bad?

The author goes on and states that "We all want more - than others. We tend to find our lives less perfect when our friends are able to spend more money, even though we never had problems with the amount we earned. People are also normally satisfied with having sex once a week, until they find out that their neighbors have more." Okay, I have to admit, this part does not match my situation. I am already too focused on what I think is best for me, I really do not compare myself to others. Thus, a plus point for me, right?

What does apply to me are sentences like "We want to know ourselves." and "We reflect our lives until nothing in it is distinguishable." Yes, I have to say that really applies to me. Especially right now with university, which is very time demanding (I have 40hours of classes every week!) and not really finding a balance between studying and doing fun stuff. I feel like all my energy goes into my studies, but still I am not doing enough, since I should also learn chemistry at home as well as the anatomy of the head (especially the mouth)extra to my classes and preparation for them.
And since all my energy goes into my studies there is nothing left for hobbies or sports which may be the main cause why I am so uncertain about myself and find myself boring at times.

The message?
Don't overthink things, just accept that there are days where you will not be able to cross a bullet point off your list, but it still may have been a "happy" day because you where chatting with your friends or got a postcard from your best friends. Never search for complete happiness, you will never find it.
Don't ask 'what makes you happy', because, as the article concludes "Something good will always come, and that knowledge alone can make you quite happy". I really like this last sentence.

Love, Jules
Thanks for reading!

Interested in the full article? It's from the magazine "NEON" - December 2013 (It's a german magazine!!)



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