Pursuing Happiness

It’s not hard to be happy when life is good. The real task is to be happy when life isn’t good. Like this econ­omy. Stress, frus­tra­tion, the feel­ings of help­less­ness com­bine to make a for­mi­da­ble oppo­nent to hap­pi­ness. I’m a happy guy, and so far I’m doing okay in this econ­omy, but I’m lucky. And I know it.

What weapons do we all have to find happiness?

1) Faith that what­ever comes your way, you’ll get through it. When I’m in a rough patch, once the shock and hurt that come with it wear off, I real­ize that I have an immense amount of faith that I’ll get through this. The faith I’m speak­ing of here here is a mix­ture of my reli­gion, my con­fi­dence in myself, my belief in those around me, and the true feel­ing that in the end I’ll win. Your faith may include only a few of the ones mine do, but still you need to real­ize that so long as you sol­dier on, you’ll make it through.

2) Right there with faith is con­fi­dence. Your con­fi­dence can be inter­nally based. You have the abil­ity, the strength, and the knowl­edge that will get you through the tough times. Or it can be con­fi­dence in oth­ers. Your fam­ily, your friends, your twit­ter fol­low­ers, your cowork­ers. Who­ever or wher­ever, here faith and con­fi­dence are nearly synonyms.

3) Don’t be an island. Depres­sion is often linked with how iso­lated some­one feels. When stress comes down on you. When bills are pil­ing up. When you feel boxed in by life, that’s when you have to break out and be with other people.

4) Be busy doing stuff you enjoy. Work­ing six jobs is a tough way to sur­vive in this econ­omy. But if they are things you enjoy doing, such as the actors here in Orlando who fre­quently have three or more places they act or per­form. I’m exceed­ingly busy between spend­ing time with Katie, work, improv, Man­a­Na­tion, WhatThe­Cast, the Orlando Magic and more. Idle hands may not be the devil’s play­thing, but they do tend to make it harder to be happy.

Four is tough. If you can’t pay the bills you may end up work­ing what­ever job you can to pay the bills and try to keep the lights on. I know this. But being busy with jobs is bet­ter than being stuck with­out a job. Right?

You’ll notice I never men­tion say­ing ‘it could be worse’ and that’s because going down that path is mak­ing you con­sider what could go wrong. And at times you may answer your­self say­ing ‘Noth­ing could be worse’ which is patently untrue. How­ever you’re now focus­ing on the neg­a­tive. Turn around. Look at the good. FIND THE GOOD IN YOUR LIFE.