hap-hap-happy {a guide on happiness}

i chuckled a little bit when i re-read that title of this post. like how in the world is a 16 year old girl who appreciates girl scout cookies way too much (they’re a food group i promise) supposed to instruct you on how to be happy. there’s the little catch, I’M not, but YOU can. i won’t make you work too hard I promise, because being happy is so so easy. we skip through life so fast and are so motivated to get things done and make things perfect that we don’t take time to realize what we are doing and how cool it is. like first off, if you’re reading this, you’re breathing, you’re living, congrats. we do so many things in our lives that seem like they should make us happy, but in the end we aren’t satisfied with the outcome. i pinned a quote the other day that had a quote that really struck me as ‘wow, it’s that easy?’

“find something that makes you happy, and use it to make others happy”

reading it over and over again made me want to sit back and think of the things that make me happy and how i can use them to make others happy as well. and the list i came up with went on and on once i got the hang of it and i realized that the way i’m supposed to do this, making others happy thing, is making myself happy first. ACTUALLY DOING THE THINGS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY. taking time for myself, which is something i rarely do enough. we always want to do things for others and feel almost selfish if we find time to do things for ourselves, but in reality we NEED this time for ourselves. we can’t give to others if we have not first given to ourselves. so this is what my list somewhat looked like once my brain had been searched for all the happy i could come up with:

actually getting sleep and waking up feeling like i got sleep, eating fresh fruit in the summer time, hot baths with loads of bubbles, coffee in the morning when the rest of the world isn’t awake, breakfast–really good breakfast, breakfast for dinner as a matter of fact, sitting outside and just being there, fresh ironed button ups and matching crew socks, ice cream all year round-with extra sprinkles, spring clothes and sunny days to match them, baking and burning my tongue on too good of brownies. realizing that happy isn’t just a feeling, it’s a way of life.