“I will be happy when I get home.”
“I’ll be happy when I get to college.”
“I’ll be happy when I get to the beach.”
These are some of the places where people say they’ll be happy.
But where is the best place to be happy?
Everywhere.
Think about it.
We read books about how to be happy at work, at home, in marriage, as a single, in parenting, etc.
Each of those places and conditions might have different challenges but the principles of happiness apply everywhere.
You know people who put up with a bad job eight hours a day and defer their happiness to evenings and weekends. That’s tragic.
You also know people unhappy at home who stay at the office late and work weekends to avoid the unhappiness.
Why shouldn’t we do what’s necessary to be happy everywhere? In the end, happiness is a choice. We achieve it through the hard work of better thinking and appropriate behavior.
Abraham Lincoln is attributed with the quote, “Folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Is happiness a choice? Yes. Simple but true. Easy to understand but hard to do. Everyone has different size obstacles in their lives that makes the choice of happiness easier or harder, depending. But it is still a choice.
The best place to be happy is everywhere. Count on it.
In addition to the “best place to be happy” you might also consider “the best time to be happy” and my response would be here and now. There is no time like the present and no present like time. That said, it is possible to move from an unhappy place, state or condition to a happy one. It’s called CHANGE. It might be a change of attitude but it could also be changing jobs, changing an environment, changing a relationship and most of all changing yourself. I don’t think it’s always as easy as just making up your mind.
You might have to make up a few other things as well. Think about what those are and focus on what needs to change, and what is within your reach and within your power.