Choosing Happiness

This weekend I graduated from Liberty University with my master’s degree in Life Coaching. I should be over the moon with happiness and excitement for reaching such a wonderful milestone. However, I am finding it hard to feel those emotions.

See I’m a planner and my problems normally start when I have planned something out so thoroughly that it should be foolproof, but it flops. Everything that could go wrong seems to do just that and my goals are then pushed back, prolonged, and sometimes come to a full-on halt.

I’ve been working on starting my life coaching business since January with hopes of being able to launch within a month of my graduation or the summer months. I knew going into this endeavor that it wouldn’t happen overnight and that it would be a challenging journey.   Everything had been going smoothly for months, up until April.

Small inconveniences happen often in everybody’s everyday lives. That’s fine and all until its many small inconveniences at one time. At that point, all of your issues seem to be bigger. I believe that’s what I’m going through currently. It seems like every week something unexpected occurs that pushes back my launch date for my business. I become more discouraged with every setback. I’ve kept my cool and have remained calm with each hiccup over the past few weeks. I have done my best to focus on the positives and also be thinking about other things I could do to better myself and this business before I get started. However, this weekend, I think I reached my breaking point at staying positive.

The plan for this weekend was full-packed with things to do to celebrate this journey of getting yet another degree and also completing the last step to launching my website. A graduation barbecue one day and my photoshoot for my website the next. Of course, it was supposed to rain at the time of my shoot so I made contact with everyone and told them we would reschedule. I promise it was almost as soon as I canceled, the weather cleared up. I couldn’t ask everyone to come again though because then I would look unorganized and unprofessional. I know I can’t control the weather or really anything for that matter, but it was the last straw. My emotions got to me and I cried about it. Which is fine except my reaction or crying was more extreme than what I would have liked in hindsight.

 I will say that I have been doing my best to be a bit more centered within myself and more positive rather than negative when things don’t go my way. To be honest that has happened only within the last 8 months. I struggle with depression and I hit a bit of a low point last year. I’ve done a lot of work to come out of it and change my mindset and outlook on life itself. Of course, there is still room for growth and improvement, but I am determined not to go back down that road. I was always told that I needed to choose happiness over anything that would make me upset or irritate me. I believe it only made me more upset. Maybe, because at the time I wasn’t in the right headspace to understand what that meant. To me, it was as if I was being told that my feelings and experiences didn’t matter to that person. I felt that I was being shut down and ignored when someone told me that. I’ve learned recently that choosing happiness doesn’t mean that I can’t feel my feelings or that I need to ignore them or pretend it didn’t happen. Instead choosing happiness to me has been a process of literally doing the things that bring me joy and give me purpose no matter what obstacles come my way. I can have any emotions that come with the ride, but it should push me to want and do better. Choosing happiness for myself means that I do whatever it takes to have the life that I envision for myself and my son. However, choosing happiness also isn’t reckless and it doesn’t put other people in an uncomfortable position. I can choose myself and still have a plan to get there without burning bridges or putting myself in a hole. Choose happiness but remain wise.

 Nothing worth having comes easy, but that doesn’t mean don’t go for it when things don’t go my way. I am doing my best to stay positive when things get tough, but I will also allow myself to feel and cry when the time comes. These past couple of weeks I was trying to remain positive and not react to what I was feeling. The only problem with that is, balling up all my feelings inside causes me to have a preventable blow-up later. I plan on doing all the things that make me happy, but I also plan to allow myself to have emotions about the things I am passionate about. The journey of choosing happiness is also a journey of finding balance.

 Envision what your best self looks like and push forward towards making that a reality. Anything is possible.

So, how will you choose happiness for yourself this week?