Appreciate the small things September 17, 2015
We want it all. Being extremely successful, loved and accomplished with a resume and lifestyle to show for it. We want to look perfect and be perfect. We crave happiness. And not the “small” happiness or feeling of content, but the comprehensive and absolutely perfect kind of happiness in both our career and private lives. We want to be on top of our to-do lists and happy every day in every department of our lives.
But life does not work like that. We strive to accomplish the goals we set for our lives. We want everything to work out in the way we want it to, and as perfect as possible. We long to have it our way, for it to be our turn with all the luck and happiness we dream of. But when we accomplish something? We are extremely happy about it, …until we are not anymore. The thing we once desperately wanted to have in our lives seems to become the new normal. We get used to it (even though we might still love it and do not want to miss it anymore) and crave the next new thing or the next improvement for our lives.
And it is great to have dreams, ambitions and wanting to better ourselves. It is quite normal and natural. Having dreams, I daresay, is even necessary. Only when we are able to dream and picture a positive future, when we have hope, we can be happy. But at the same time those dreams and ambitions can stand between us and our happiness. Because happiness lies not only in the big accomplishments and dreams that we have. Appreciate the small things along the way towards your dreams. You will only be truly happy and content with your life when you begin being grateful and noticing all the good things around you. Be content and grateful for what you have right now in this moment. You need to start noticing the things you can be grateful for and see all the happiness there is to find around you.
It starts with your health, the roof over your head, the food in your belly and having a person to share everything with. It is the sound of rain on your window and the feeling of your favorite pullover, the book you love to read or your favorite song on the radio. It is the smile reserved for only you, the laughter of a toddler or the joke your friend tells you, the one that always makes you laugh until your stomach hurts.
It is the flowers on the side of the road, a scoop of your favorite ice cream and the sun that peaks through the clouds on this day and shines in your face. It is the smell of freshly brewed coffee and the moment of quiet after midnight, when it seems that your house is the only one in the road that still has light in it. It is waking up in the morning and realizing you do not need to rush to get up. It is the feeling of grass under your bare feet and the wind running through the trees, reading a note someone wrote for you that makes you smile and to hear the purring of a cat. You can find moments of happiness in a lot of different things. You just need to see them.
Photography by © benscherjon / Pixabay