Today is International Day Of Happiness and this year’s theme is Share Happiness – focusing on the importance of relationships, kindness and helping each other.
That’s nice then isn’t it?
It really is, but, seriously there’s a blimmin’ national day for everything now isn’t there?! National Peanut Butter day is 24th January – I rest my case.
So, bah humbug. I object to there being international made-up days for everything, even if the intention behind them is kindness and helping each other out. Just call me Scrooge (what I don’t mind about peanut butter day is that I can feasibly eat more Reese’s peanut butter cups, though).
What if we could just be kind and generous of spirit towards one another every day, regardless of whether someone declares it to be so?
I don’t like being told what to do very much as you might realise. But also, I don’t like being told what kind of mood I’m supposed to be in. It’s like some saying, “cheer up, it may never happen,” – when it already has. Or like your brother saying, “oooh mooody” when you’ve got teenage PMT (the git.)
There are two things here:
- We don’t like being told what to do (some of us anyway!)
- We don’t choose our moods
BUT – we can choose to change our moods you know.
This has only very recently become apparent to me. Certainly, when I was a teenager, if I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, boy – did my brother know about it! And in more recent times, when I was struggling with depression, I did not feel that this was something I was in control of at all.
But doing the work that I do and helping others to change how they feel about themselves and their lives, I can now see that this is truly available to all of us, and it can be changed within moments, as long as we make a choice.
Now, I’m not saying it’s always easy. And certainly, if we do have depression or another mental illness, I’m not being so bold as to say “snap out of it” – absolutely NOT AT ALL.
What I am saying, is that if we are lucky enough to be mentally healthy and a have normal range of emotions, there are things we can do to help ourselves and others cheer up if we’re having a bad day. And the more we do these things, the easier it is to get ourselves into a more constant state of stable cheer!
I’m talking about simple things like picking up the phone and talking to a friend or family member (a problem shared is a problem halved after all), doing some exercise, practising meditation, buying ourselves some flowers… whatever our good habits are, and remembering to treat ourselves nicely and keep on keeping on!
There is also the universal law of attraction – and affirmations; you get back what you put out. So, if you wander around saying, “oh I’m so cross that someone has invented an International Day of Happiness – what a load of old s*@*e!” and grump about all day. It’s pretty likely that folk are going to grump at you and prove your point to you.
Whereas you could choose to embrace this international day of happiness and truly spend the day living the values of it and sharing happiness and kindness with others – highly likely that others will respond to you in kind, and you will have a much nicer day.
This morning I began my day feeling very tired after not sleeping very well, and then feeling sad about a cat I saw outside in the snow and wind and cold and realising that PMT was upon me (takes a slightly different format now than when I was a teenager – my brother wouldn’t recognise me!).
I thought to myself, well I could choose to grump about feeling sad and tired today, and have a pretty miserable day. Or I could choose to ignore the tired, not worry about the cat (that belongs to someone else) and get on with my day, enjoy the company of clients and colleagues, have some laughs, share stories, support one another. How nice?
Who needs an International Day of Happiness to encourage us to do this? Not us!
