How to Be Happy: Figuring It Out and Not Giving Up

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Shanna S Mathews-Mendez

Figuring out how to be happy can be difficult; it can feel pointless on bad days; it can feel impossible after a long stretch of sadness or resentment. It also doesn’t help that the world is either bombarding us with “don’t worry! be happy!” exhortations or shaming us for trying to be happy: “no one is happy all the time.” The truth is both more complicated and more simple than both of those extremes. And one thing is essential. In your search for happiness, you must not give up.

No Time for Happy

Honestly, who has time to be happy? To just sit and be happy? Please. I am a full time mother of a six year old and a one year old. I homeschool my oldest, and three days a week I head to a center to tutor high school kids.

And in the in between times I am building a business and organizing several different side jobs, all of which relate directly to my business – bookkeeping, content writing, women’s circles, yoga instructor and on and on.

Happy?

Sure, I’m happy I’m still on my feet! (Technically I’m on my ass in a chair, but you get the point.)

Sometimes I think I forget to breathe. I don’t feel overwhelmed so much as I feel like “damn my life is full right now.”

A common thought during my crazy days? “Okay, I need ten minutes to myself.”

For me, ten minutes legitimately to myself can get me back to my happy place.

Why do I insist on a happy place? I have written about this before (in, ahem, French), and I’ll say it again: if we’re not here to be happy, to have fun, then what’s the point?

Just ten minutes.

How to Be Happy: Be Alone

Time, space, and quiet. Those are the things that get me back to a happy place. A place some might call “zen,” where I can read, think, let my mind wander, maybe even watch a show without interruption. In a pinch, I’ll take a hot bubble bath. Alone. With whatever my drink of choice is and a magazine.

So I run a bath while my kids are distracted, dump in some bubble bath, make a fresh cup of coffee with my french press and my new coffee from my Nocking Point wine (and coffee!) club.

Yes, one of my favorite superheroes has a wine club that includes coffee. How could I resist the Arrow?

“Honey! Your papa wants to color with you!” I tell my daughter, generating excitement.

“He does!? Come on Papa! Let’s color!” She shouts.

“Ten minutes.” I mouth silently to my husband as my six year old runs off to the living room table and my toddler goes chasing after her.

Quietly, I head in the opposite direction to my waiting bath, take my obligatory “spa day” photo and rest into the hot water with a lit candle on the counter and a fresh copy of Vanity Fair on the toilet seat waiting to be devoured (well, at least the Jennifer Lawrence article).

Not one minute later I hear my toddler babbling her way toward the bathroom door. I have a two thousand square foot apartment. My bathroom is at one end of a long distance and my living room, where the kids are supposed to be coloring with their dad, is at the other end.

Really?

“Ba ba ba da da duh du didle didle diddle duh.” She says through the door.

I sit quietly with my eyes closed. “Really?” I think to myself.

“Hey!” Here comes my husband behind her. “There you are! Come on.” And he picks her up and heads back down the hall.

This happens a couple more times before my six year old catches on, bursts into the room, rips her clothes off, and joins me.

Then her sister finds her in the bath with me and will not rest until she climbs her stout little legs into the tub with us.

Rub a dub dub.

Oh well.

Later, Jen. Later.

Don’t Give Up

In truth, I enjoy bathing with my kids. We have fun, it is good girl time, and they are much easier to clean when I am in the tub with them.

But I also enjoy time to myself.

Self love is one of the most important things in my life. I practice it myself, and I preach it to anyone who will listen.

A big part of self love is self care. The reality is that we have to take care of the ones we love, which means we have to take care of ourselves too.

Self care for me means time alone.

I have found that time alone is one of the bravest and most delicious acts of self love because it forces you to reckon with yourself. Check in. Remind yourself that you are loved. Even if right now you feel like you are the only one who loves you, at least you have yourself.

Alone time allows you to heal, to deal, and to be the most authentic you you can be.

When I find myself adrift and disconnected from my usual contented space, I need self care, alone time, to get me back in alignment with my happiness.

And if I don’t get it today, I don’t get upset, but I don’t give up.

I’ll try again tomorrow.

And the next day.

I’ll stay up past bedtime to get some alone time if I have to.

I am crystal clear on my personal needs, on how to be happy, and I make sure I meet them.

So I can meet the happiness needs of my loved ones.

How to Be Happy: Mud Bath

Once I have filled my own vessel, met my own personal needs, another way I find happiness, filling the vessel even further, is by helping my kids find their happy spots.

Quite often, this involves mud (or some other hands-on, messy, texture and tactile experience).

My six year old has always loved to play with mud, and we just had a string of rainy days in our area.

“I think..” I said with a sly tone in my voice as I looked at Celaya out of the corner of my eye, mouth twisted up in a smirk, “it’s time to introduce Matilda to mud.”

“We’re going to play in the mud?!” She shrieked and ran off to her room to put some old ratty clothes on.

Conveniently, we live across the street from a giant baseball field, so it provides an ideal opportunity to slip and slide and squelch and squirt in mud and mud puddles.

And so it did on this day.

Happiness was not hard to find for any of us for those couple of hours.

Needless to say, my toddler is following in Celaya’s muddy footprints.

How to Be Happy: Let Them Be Kids

Let them be kids. Give them freedom. Let them get messy and dirty and loud and silly. You might think that it will make so much more work for you -laundry, dirty floors, muddy or sandy bathtubs – but I guarantee you will find an extreme joy in watching them be wild and free.

When I need a happy fix, some mental space, some freedom from my demanding life, and I can’t just drop kick my kids, I find something to do that will occupy them for a significant amount of time while requiring very little of me.

I even dipped my own feet in and got some muddy spa day freedom and joy.

Mud keeps everyone happy. I can quite literally just stand (and squelch and squirch) and watch. I don’t have to color or put a puzzle piece in place. My kids aren’t fighting over who gets what toy or magnet or fork. My only level of engagement is enjoying the show.

And it is a beautiful show.

So? What Is Happiness?

So here comes the real issue – the pushback, the frustration, and the discontent.

People somehow get a misconception that happiness means being a ray of sunshine at all moments of the day. That happiness means perpetually smiling. That happiness means bliss is leaking from every pore in your body even when you are trying desperately to get a crying baby to sleep in the middle of the night or having a battle of wills with your six year old over why she can’t have “just one more piece of candy.”

Not so.

When you look around at your life, do you think, “yes, this is the life I chose, and I am so glad I did?”

If so, then you’re happy.

You may not be an exuberant, bubbly barbie bouncing boundlessly around the ballroom (no? not you?), but you are a happy person.

If you are a happy person, then show it, act like it, take the time you need to refill your vessel and remember that you are happy, and get to work on the “how to be happy” part. Send your kids to play in the mud, or the sand, or the playdough, and sit back and watch the show, while also mentally imagining Steven Amell personally delivering your wine and coffee.

How to Be Happy: Let Oliver Queen deliver your wine and coffee

(Just kidding, honey! I would never do that!)

Alternatively, if you look around at your life and think, “dear goddess this sucks. I hate my life.”

Or,

“Ugh, my life is so freaking boring!”

Change it!

Decisions Decisions

Life is about choices, and every choice you make comes from and contributes to either a place of love or a place of fear.

If you’ve been acting out of fear, shift to love.

It is actually quite simple once you try it.

While figuring out how to be happy may seem complicated, once you get it, the actions you need to take to get there are not complicated at all.

Make one small change.

Grab a book, kiss your husband goodbye, pat your kids on the top of the head, and go spend an hour in the coffee shop or the library. Take a yoga class. Go see a movie. Join a women’s circle (like mine!). Do something for you. Just for you.

How to Be Happy: Practice Self Love

Start with yourself, and grow from there.

Once you get going, acting out of self love, you will find yourself happier and happier, with little moments of busy and blah and blech thrown in.

But mostly, happy.

And as you are happy, you spread happiness, and the people who love you are happy to see you happy.

So then, when your kids run into your perfect spa day experience covered in mud and jump into your glorious bubble bath, you’ll find a kind of happiness in that too.

And that Jennifer Lawrence article isn’t going anywhere.

Just make sure you keep heading back to it.

Do you already have a happiness regimen? What is your refuge? Where do you go? What do you do? How do you reset?

Or are you shifting now, as we speak, away from fear and towards love, overhauling your life like I have mine? Still wondering how to be happy?

Tell me about in the comments below or over in our Facebook group. I’d love to hear from you!