What no one tells you about happiness.

This week I started reading a book and the first thing in the first chapter mentioned was: Choose to be happy.

If that would be true it would mean that only we alone as a person are responsible to live a happy life and we couldn’t blame the weather for our bad mood, the person in the supermarket who just took the last bottle of milk to destroy our day, the person living with us for leaving their socks all over the place for being guilty of creating a tense atmosphere. It would mean we cannot blame the general situation, the lost client, our period, the news or even the empty bank account for feeling bad and being unhappy. That would be quite a change of life wouldn’t it?

I thought about it the whole week. Can we just choose to be happy? I decided for this week I would wake up and just-be-happy- without-any-negative-thought. I woke up, did a nice workout, had a nice coffee and breakfast and just was happy smiling around like a teddy bear and I felt good, I even offered to do the groceries on my own I felt so good. And it worked … at least for the first hours of my day. Then the universe challenged me directly. A supplier that couldn’t deliver our fabric for the new napkins for our Christmas collection of Mein Monogramm, a pitch to a new big client for our pillows that we just lost, invoices that were still not paid and I hate going after that, a to do list to the moon and back, millions of images to edit from this summer, the rainiest days ever so we had to reschedule shootings… and the list goes on. And it was really really hard to stay positive and it didn’t always work out and I know I sometimes drove Conrad CRAZY for trying to be positive even with the negative things happening around us. From this situation I learned a few things this week.

1.YOU are the one and only person who can make you happy

That means and implies that NOBODY else is either responsible to make you happy or is guilty of making you unhappy. That is a tough lesson but it is like it is. Be happy with yourself and choose to be happy and positive and you will see that people around you will become more happy too.

2.What happens today is the past tomorrow, and the past is much overvalued

Even if something feels like the end of the world today because you perfect client didn’t book you and you were so looking forward to it, or you don’t fit into your favorite pair of skinny jeans anymore as you gained a few kilos over the summer from all the bbqs and white wines – this isn’t the end of the world and tomorrow it will be a little less important. Instead of living in the past and what has happened to you you should focus on the future. Focus on all the great plans and chances that lay right in front of you, focus to loose that extra weight if it disturbs you that much, focus on new clients and the past is just the past.

And though this process is still growing in me and I catch myself regularly becoming grumpy cat again and forcing myself to be happy instead of just being happy, those moments a day I get to be happy are worth the process.