Life will move quicker than lightning across the sky if you let it. On the contrary, there are sometimes when we can see life for what it is in its entirety. We can feel it, hold it, & cherish it without the constraint of time. The same can be said about our happiness. We can pay attention to happiness and learn to feel it when it is there without us knowing. However, many people rather have contentedness than happiness. How can we make happiness more prevalent in our daily life? In this week’s blog, I will break down the idea of happiness and turn it around to help make it stay for the long term.

Happiness is defined as a state of pleasure or cheerfulness. Happiness is the Golden Grail that people look for in their life. They say that they just want to be happy or be with someone who makes them happy. I am not sure where the idea of happiness originated from. Still, I can tell you that it has morphed into a Hollywood fantasy that has been misused. People today have a false concept of what happiness is and how they should go about getting it. If we think of one of the most significant contributors to being happy, it is abundant money. The second factor to being happy is in the relationships you hold.

If you can go back down memory lane to middle school and then high school, you will notice that peer acceptance is needed. If peers do not accept a person, negative and remissive traits and qualities begin to form. This is not to say that if you had zero friends in school, you would turn out to be some menace to society. I can show you data on both sides from people with no friends that would learn to be OK in their skin when they reached adulthood and others who didn’t make it to the age of 21. The human mind is a fantastic puzzle, from how it develops to perceiving knowledge and experiences.

Looking at how the brain perceives happiness will help us dive into a life full of happy experiences. Those experiences can range from relationships, successes, luxuries, and simple pleasures. All of these can make you feel pleased to some degree. Some might make you feel joy at a greater level, but that is not to say that you will be without problems in your life. I have written numerous blogs on the feeling and attainment of happiness, but today we will dive into paying attention when happiness is the feeling you should be feeling. Another word for this is called gratitude.

Gratitude has become a lost term in our current society. People appreciate, love, admire, cherish, and respect life, but not many people become mindful of gratitude and what they are grateful for. Simply remembering to be grateful once in a while on special occasions like Birthdays, Thanks Giving, Christmas, & New Year’s won’t cut it. However, those are only four days out of the year. Where are the other 361 days? Yes, you might pray each morning and reflect on what you have to be grateful for, but I want to go a step further. The action to be more grateful at any given time is to look at life for what it is. Fleeting, but not gone.

People often forget that the life they have is not everlasting. Yes, you can make your mark in history and create a legacy that can stand the test of time, but many people choose to live regular lives. These people will be forgotten when they pass on, but that does not have to be your outcome. The state of happiness does one crucial thing in our mind, and that is to create opportunity. That opportunity can help you start to live more purposefully in the pursuit of a life worth living and worth remembering.

I call this area of opportunity a pocket of happiness. In this window of time, we can make significant accomplishments and strides toward a better future. We are more motivated and more eager to face the day with the best version of ourselves. However, our brains do not see these pockets as a chance for opportunity and growth. Our mind considers these times as a chance to relax and cherish the moment. Though loving the moment is a good thing, it should be a constant state of being throughout your day. If you want to learn more about living in the moment, check out these first two articles.

These pockets of happiness will be critical to your future happiness and success because they will act as a motivator for you. Motivation is a temporary energy source, but it is easy to fill it up. You could essentially fill up each day and get new motivation for a given task or day. However, we should be focused on finding a source of purposeful energy that does not die out before we do. Typically passion or purpose can drive you each day from start to finish, but most people are not primed to look at their life like that. People are more geared toward doing the bare minimum and accepting what life gives them. However, that will not create meaningful happiness in your life.

In conclusion, pockets of happiness can lead to that last push to help us get out of the rut we call life. These pockets can help us see what is possible and help us become more than we would be if we didn’t take advantage of them. Though this concept will require a restructuring of your beliefs, it could be a determining factor for the last steps toward your success and goals. I have used this concept several times in my life, and each time I use it, I am always shocked by how much more I can give. The result is creating an even stronger mindset that will help me stay resilient and fight for the best life possible. In turn, when I achieve great things in my day, I notice that happiness is more prevalent in my days and my future days. Happiness can be there for the long run, but you have to focus on the things that matter most in your life.

Until then,

Michael Rearden

Founder of Reven Concepts