Read the original blog post at naomimaynourish.wordpress.com.
Do you have someone in your life that makes you happy when you're with them? You look forward to seeing them, you get excited when they text you, you leave their company with a smile on your face and a lightness in your heart?
We should all have friends like these. We should endeavour to be a friend like this to others. It's comforting to have good friends, it's heart warming to know you are considered a friend like this. When it's mutual, it's like winning at life. There are indeed rewards like these. You win at life for many things: riding bikes with no handlebars, baking a successful cake, hearing your kid say "I love you". Everyone has a different qualification system for what counts as "Winning At Life". I'd like to redefine what success looks like.
Success is living loved, doing what you love, and giving your time to those you love.
It's not just the letters after your name, or what age you get married, or how beautiful your wife is, or how many cars and homes you have. Success is a heart thing. It's an inner sense of accomplishment and satisfaction based in knowing whether you do nothing, or do your task: you are still a valuable person. You still matter. Your thoughts and feelings are still important. You are still needed in the lives of others. You are still marking history.
Happiness isn't in achieving something. It's in being something: being satisfied with who you are. You're the only you.
It's easy to be happy around someone who's at rest. You can feel someone else's stress when they're striving to achieve, worrying about an exam or interview, or paying bills. You can feel someone else's ease when they're living under the mindset that, no matter what, they'll be okay. They'll still be them. You're in charge of you. And you alone control your happiness and your hope for whatever you're facing.
Be someone who maintains hope, and you'll always find something to be happy about. And those around you will feel that hope and peace and happiness.
So how do you be happy?
- You hang out with happy people.
- You quit sweating the small stuff.
- You look to the future with hope.