When in Doubt Choose Happiness

It’s time to open your eyes.

Seriously, open them as wide as you can.

I’m about to drop a knowledge bomb on you that will literally make you open your eyes and see your world differently but I’ll get to that a little later… let me start from the beginning.

This morning I awoke in a chilly apartment with the sun shining and the sounds of skateboards landing on the sidewalk of Venice outside the window. As a girl with 4 brothers who skateboard this instantly brings a smile to my face. There was this stillness in the apartment.

I take a deep breathe while closing my eyes, there’s this overwhelming happiness that comes over me. I open my eyes and smile inside and out.

In that moment I was embracing the stillness, the sun peering through the window and the sounds outside. I knew I was exactly where I should be at this very moment. I decide to get dressed and head out to Urth Cafe, it’s about a mile and half walk from where we are staying, but it’s my favorite.

I was in this amazing moment with myself that I wanted to walk in this cool brisk air to get my favorite chai. I figure I may as well set the tone and put on some Sam Smith. Of course money on my mind plays and I think to myself “I get you Sam Smith” because I’m the same way, love is more important to me than money… my mind goes off to thinking of love, the butterflies, warmth and love overwhelm me.. I realize I am smiling from ear to ear.

So what do I do? I share my smile with the un­expecting passer bys.

My smile catches them off guard, not many people smile at each other these days if you really think about it.

I arrive at Urth, order my favorite Chai and some berries, when this elderly man starts chatting with me asking if I’m in school, I reply no, that I have come for some Chai and some writing. We smile at each other and I’m on my way to find my table. Just when I have found one outside, he comes over and says “I don’t know if this is strange but would you like to join me inside so we can drink our latte’s together?” I looked up from my phone and said without hesitation “sure why not”. It wasn’t inappropriate in any way… In fact he was a solid 50 years older than me, but I could feel this overwhelming happiness inside him and he just wanted to share it with someone.

Joe and I sit for an hour and a half, laughing, smiling, sharing happiness, talking about his kids, my family, how I try to see myself in every single moment that I have and about having a full life. We had a shared love for feeling alive. He’s an avid surfer and to this day he gets up for a “dawn shred sesh” wherever the swell is solid. He doesn’t let age stop him, the ocean is a part of him, it’s what keeps him fresh, and recharged.

Right when he was about to leave he turns to me and says “always do what you love while choosing happiness”. I just smiled and almost wanted to jump up and hug him but I chose to shake hands and part ways. See, the reason why I wanted to jump up and hug him was because all morning, I was consciously choosing this overwhelming happiness every step I took, every chord that played, every stranger that I smiled at.

Here’s the thing, most of us, even me up until recently, think that other people create our emotions. We think, we had a bad day so we’re unhappy, some lady was super rude on the phone or at the store so of course they pissed us off. Our boyfriends being super distant so now they put us in a bad mood. So what’s happening here is that we are putting our emotions into other people’s hands. why the FUCK are we doing this? That’s us giving other people the power to choose our emotions and the course of our day.

ENOUGH of this madness it needs to stop RIGHT NOW.

So take a deep deep breath, think of your happiest place and listen to what I’m about to explain.

Are you listening?

Goooood.

­We have grown up with all these fairy tales and movies that tell us that a man will make us the happiest girls in the world. So we grow up fantasizing about men making us happy. When we fight with our boyfriends we allow them to put us in bad moods. When they kiss us or tell us they love us, then we let them navigate us to happiness.

­We get into arguments with loved ones, strangers, etc. and we also allow them to navigate our moods depending on how they treat us and how we feel in return. How many times have you heard “I’m super pissed off today because this person cut me off on the highway today” or “this person was super rude at starbucks today” or even “ugh i was stuck in traffic i’m so annoyed” we even give traffic power to navigate us.

But here’s the deal, we have been living a terrible lie our whole lives! We have been conditioned that if someone is rude that they made you unhappy… If someone’s nice, they made you happy, but there’s that damn word made again.

Other people are NOT in charge of our emotions.

WE ACTUALLY HAVE THE ABILITY TO CHOOSE OUR OWN EMOTIONS!

WE have the ultimate POWER to choose our emotions unrelient on other people!

You know what that means? We can actually CHOOSE happiness every single time!

#knowledgebomb

Do you know how much less you will be pissed off? Do you know how much more you will be able to maintain your internal happiness during those fights with your boyfriend or bitches in customer service or even during traffic.

This is what you’re gonna do:

Close your eyes and think of your happy place, what location, makes you feel most alive?

For me it’s every time I’m swimming in the ocean.

Okay now visualize it.

As you’re visualizing it breath it in and out, you may even catch yourself smiling.

Guess what, you just chose happiness in a super simple way. Don’t you see how much more calm you are now? how much more alive you feel? The moment you take control of your own happiness is the moment you take back the power to live on your own terms.

Without going all YOLO on you, I’m gonna let you know that yes you only have one life, but why spend it allowing other people to affect your moods? One of my ex-boyfriends and I would argue about me wanting him to make me happy. He told me one day “listen, your happiness has literally nothing to do with me, you are in charge of your own happiness.”

At first I thought to myself well this is pretty mean, here he is telling me that he’s not gonna make me happy how i want to be, but then after delving deeper with it internally, I realized he’s completely right. Why am I putting my want of happiness on him? Do you know how much pressure that puts on someone? So that’s the moment when I realized that I have been living a complete lie. It is my power to choose how I feel and to be completely happy on my own.

So after that, every time we’d argue, I’d relax into myself and I’d remain happy, of course I may have been arguing back but I didn’t let him affect my feelings any longer because I chose happiness in every single moment.

So what I am doing here today is handing you this power to put your life back into your own hands. To say fuck the world I’m awesome and nothing can bring me down me but me. Of course you will have bad moods, but in those moments just do that little exercise re­-centering yourself into happiness and relaxing into yourself. You’ll find that your bad moods don’t stay as long as they do.

So later today take a walk, put on some of your favorite tunes and smile to yourself and/or the passer by’s, choose happiness, see how other’s react and you will be pleasantly surprised on how the rest of your day goes.

Breathe in that fresh air and just smile, embrace your new world with your eyes wide open, knowing that you will always have the power to choose how you feel.

Choose happiness every single time.