Before you base the review of this article on the title alone, please read it first!

I consider myself a very happy person. Not a “lucky girl”, but a HAPPY PERSON! These are two completely different concepts. The first one would mean that happiness just came, the second – that I made my luck by myself. A lucky person is someone who won the lottery; a happy person doesn’t buy a lottery ticket because he/she is not looking for happiness in material wealth. A happy person appreciates what he/she already has, so they don’t need to win.

I’m not a lucky one. Seriously! I’ve never won anything in my life, even in school contests, at best I was the second. I gave birth to a disabled child. It was not always colorful in my family home. The time when I was a teenager was for me a big part of a nightmare (I kept a diary, which I sometimes come back to, so I can remember well how hard it used to be at times…). But I decided a long time ago that I would be very happy in life. So I am.

Happiness is a matter of choice. And I chose to be happy. What does this mean in practice?

For me, happiness is a lot of small pleasures.

If you ask me what makes me happy, there is not enough time for me to enumerate all these things. Some of them are defined in my head (health and smile of my children, dating with my husband, my students’ successes, holidays in the mountains, coffee with a friend, daily training, running with a dog, etc …) and others appear spontaneously (moment of relaxation, nice comment on fb, a smile from a stranger on the street, a moment when my kids will leave the house for a while and it’s quiet …). It all makes me feel happy and I can fully enjoy the moment. My personal task is to provide these moments and state of mind, I do not demand this from others. If I want to get a smile from someone, I smile to them, when I dream of mountains, I put away money and organize a trip (it often means a resignation from other, less important comforts), if I want a coffee with a friend in a very intense day, I am not looking for an excuse, I only find time for it! I know what makes me feel good, so I provide it to myself.

If I associated happiness with money and what they can provide to me, I would probably be a very unhappy person. The desire to have “big money” is very fatal. Because what does it mean? How much is needed to ensure your happiness? People who see happiness in money always miss something: first a million, then another, then the tenth, and finally they also miss someone … Money can not be the goal of life.

Happy people don’t “earn money”, they only pursue their passions, and this often brings them big money. If money was  their initial goal, they would’ve ended their businesses as soon as they gained a good income. And yet they usually do not.

I try to ensure inner peace. To achieve this goal, of course, I also need financial security, so I do my best to make money. I work as much as I want – to allow myself to earn enough money to secure this inner peace. And that’s very little. I do not need wealth. I often limit working hours because I choose free time: for me and my family. Because I know that time can’t be turned back, and life with a watch in my hand is a torment ….

I’ve learned to plan.

I plan many aspects of our everyday life. And it doesn’t bother me at all, on the contrary. A well-organized life transforms into peace, and thus happiness. That’s why I plan: I make weekly shopping lists and keep them tight (gosh, how much you can save in this way !!!), every morning I make a list of things to do on a given day, I often write them down and I am very happy if I manage to have all of them done at the end of the day! I plan a menu for my family, I prepare our breakfast and lunch boxes carefully in the evening – it also makes me happy, because I make sure my husband and kids aren’t hungry and I care about their healthy diet . Every Sunday I plan my work in the kitchen, because Sunday is the day of cooking and baking delicacies for the whole week. This planning also makes me happy, because I simply implement a good plan. And at the end I’m happy that I made it 🙂 Planning is an important part of a happy life.

I surround myself with people who make me happy! I don’t have enemies.

For many unhappy people, changing the environment turns out to be a recipe for all worries! This is because in order to gain dubious benefits (often material), they start toxic relationships.  They are stuck in this for years, and then it turns out that it is enough to limit or cut off certain contacts and life suddenly becomes more beautiful! Who we spend our time with and who we allow to influence our lives, to a large extent, creates our reality.

That’s why I spend time with people who make me feel good and avoid meetings with those who evoke negative emotions in me. I don’t participate in family conflicts, I avoid gossiping!!! It’s that simple! Thanks to this, I avoid conflicts in my life, don’t swallow venom, which the mean ones want to offer me, I don’t waste precious time analyzing someone’s mean behavior.

In return, I get peace and friends that I can always count on. When I am down, I have someone to call. I also always have someone to turn to for good advice. In return I am also available because I know that a friendly relationship can’t be one-sided!

I don’t spend time analyzing what others say behind my back!

Gossiping is a popular method to generate conflicts around you. That’s why I do not deal with them. And if under the unnecessary emotions I happen to have something unnecessary “splash”, I feel very bad about it, so I try to control my emotions and not talk about anyone behind their back. Well, but gossiping with a friend is a different thing! I chat with Ewka about people and I see nothing wrong in it, because we do no harm to anyone. Of course, provided “gossip” concerns important events in the world of our friends and are not meant to offend anyone. As a rule, however, my conversations with my friends are focused on a rather constructive track, we talk more often about our matters, about life, than about matters of other people. Because what’s the point in wasting time on matters that don’t concern us?!?! This is what I always think about when I observe sad people. Why are they wasting so much time analyzing and discussing the lives of others???

What about rumors about me? I smile and don’t bother thinking about them. Besides, I think that since we have this blog with Ewka, people have nothing to make up about us, because we often give them our life on a tray. Paradoxically, the interest in our private lives probably went down 🙂 🙂 And this is a very positive side effect of running a blog;)

“You find it easy to talk about it because you have …”

This quote from many people is a frequent veil before admitting that they don’t really want to take responsibility for their own lives. Saying that You can’t demand more from yourself because: you have children, you have a hard job, you have no money, you’re sick – these are just stupid excuses! Each of us need something different to achieve happiness! The fact that I have so much fun with my workouts doesn’t mean that my friend will also need it for better well-being (although I stubbornly claim that sport is a medicine for everything!). It is important that without excuses we try to fill our lives with what makes us happy. Many seemingly negative events in life can be viewed from a different angle and often seem “not so bad”;) I recently experienced a situation in which due to the bad intentions of one person, I was deprived of the opportunity to take a very interesting extra work. I had counted on a new challenge and more cash. Unfortunately, it failed. Instead of feeling sorry for myself, I began to enjoy the time that I kept. Money would be useful, but more time for other activities is something I also enjoy 🙂 I try to look at every situation from the bright side. And if I can’t see it, I am looking for solutions.

I don’t understand people who complain and do nothing to change what they complain about. If I married the wrong man, I would not waste my whole life to be with him. If my job doesn’t suit me – I’m looking for another one (luckily I have a beautiful job and I don’t have to change it).

My good friend, who has a really great relationship with her husband and both are often admired for this fact, has to deal with a commentary like this one many times: “You are lucky, because you’ve got a good husband.” I love how she responds to such comments:

“I wasn’t given my husband, I CHOSE him!” That’s right! HAPPINESS is a matter of CHOICE … 😉