MY PLACE – POETRY , AFFIRMATIONS & MORE

As long as I can remember, I have always had the image of the scales of justice in my mind’s eye whenever I consider what happiness should look like in my life.

Having witnessed my internal justice scale randomly tipping to the left or tipping to the right, what this had always meant tome was that life was just trying to get in balance, and of course how I would expect the scale to behave naturally, hypothetically speaking of course.

As we all strive to have a fulfilling balanced life it’s only natural that from time to time we will all have our up’s and downs. The scale logically will teeter back and forth and sometimes tip to one side just a little bit too long, or dip down the other way just a little bit too long;  such as when you fall in love= teeter up, loss of a job = teeter down.

I really have no idea why this scale image has always come to my mind or why it always felt so important to me to keep a close eye on this one single measuring device. Maybe I need to look a closer at this measure especially as it seems its what I base my entire happiness existence on!

I have always considered myself well read in terms of self help and motivational stuff, God knows I needed it. I also know we all seek some sort of balance in life and each and every single one of us has a different sense of what happiness looks like.

I know one thing for sure, social media sure has no problem telling us what would/could make us happy.

So I started thinking…..what if I decided to no longer use my tried and true scales of justice as my only measure. What else might I do, how would I really know if I were happy?

With my current thinking in mind I suppose I could just “settle” for my scale dipping down too far and hope one day it will of so gently sway back to a balanced median position. Or maybe I could wish that my happiness would stay as high as possible and ignore those not so great moments in my life wishing they would just hurry up and get on with it not paying too much attention those lows.

I could consider that life cannot be managed by a scale couldn’t I ?  Maybe instead I could just take charge of my life and my happiness and look at it another way. I’m still not sure what that looks like but now I just have to map it all out and see what else I might be missing.

What is happiness?

Financial happiness– having wealth, money, security, fun things

Spiritual happiness– feeling connected to a higher power, fully allowing oneself to submit that in some way or another we are really not in control of our destiny as it was already mapped out.

Educational happiness-scholar, studying every book you can and being a lifelong student of education

Personal growth happiness– taking a journey of self discovery till you finally find your ahaa moment

Physical happiness– perfect body, healthy lifestyle, athlete, endorphin junkie

Sexual happiness, living out all your desires, no boundaries, no rules, sexual freedom

Relationship happiness– finding the perfect mate, your soul mate

Religious happiness– fully devoting yourself to a religion and living strictly within those boundaries

Social happiness– having scores of friends and social events to keep busy from morning till dusk

Family happiness– having supportive family and perfect children that never ever made you want to run away from home, or feel guilt about that unanswered call

Hmm I really can’t think of many more right now however I can imagine that the list could certainly be added to.  I know many people over time have considered at least one of these “notions of happiness” as the be all and end all, but is it really?

I suppose if I were to use my scales of justice again and applied it to all the areas of my life I may actually see my happiness cannot be determined solely, not when only focusing in on one or two areas of my life, as how could this possible be a true concise measure.

I mean isn’t happiness so much more than just financial happiness and/or the perfect mate( if that was what I was relying on for full happiness mode).

Come to think of it If only one or two areas of my life staggered on the low side of the scale with the rest on the high side, I must have to consider that this too means I must still have happiness yes?

The only question now is how long do I have to wait for the negative balance on my scale to tip back to the median? In the past a negative balance too far to one side meant I would naturally make a drastic change in my life to get things back to my happy place, or my search for a happier place( you know like a major move, divorce etc). Will my scale really tip that far down now if I actually considered everything in my life as a measure of true happiness?

Looking at this now Im beginning to realize that when I was using my scale measure when unhappy I it was because I was only applying my scale theory to only one or two areas or my life.

My final conclusion is that happiness can indeed still be achieved if I simply changed my focus to how much good was going on in my life and not just what wasn’t going well.

I now see something differently!

 Baazoonga!!  Whoa! I think I have the answer.

How about you? What do you consider happiness to be, how does it look?

Well if you ask me, it can look like whatever you decide it to be !