Monday 27 October 2014

The How to Happiness

There are always these few days every month (especially girls) where you just feel so out of reach of happiness. It's like everywhere you look you see everyone else twirling around in their happy skirts, posting on Instagram telling the world how #happy and #blessed they are.



And then there's you - Feeling like a failure in every aspect of life and somehow shit things jussst had to occur more frequently during these times.
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You lost your stuff. You craved for fatty food but felt all greasy afterwards. You argued with your family. Your tons of deadlines suddenly closed in altogether. Your favourite drama got boring. Your skin went downhill. You met strange and rude people on the streets. You started to get sick.
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ok you got me right. 


I used to think this only happens to me, but after a good 22 years (No my birthday is not here YET so dont count it as 23) in this world, I can almost be certain EVERYONE felt like this before and still feels that way every now and then. 



YOU ASKED WHY.
Because this is life. It's not a never-ending upward escalator, which is engineeringly impossible. 

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And Google (omg I didn't know Google has such a weird colour combi. It's like the guy had stopped trying to think of new colours after orange and the boss happened to check on him after G so he tried again with L, but then gave up altogether at E again. Seriously. Google you should have invested in a qualified colorist) And spell-check you can go ahead and put all your ugly little wobbly red lines under my 'engineeringly'. It IS a WORD if readers can understand it PERFECTLY so who are you to suggest me to change that to 'SNEERINGLY' and 'LINGERINGLY'. Imagine how smarty-panty (again I deem smarty-panty more adjective-like than merely 'smarty-pants') I would sound if I were to listen to you and come across a depressed suicidal guy one day on a rooftop and I were to tell him 'HEY! Life cannot be a never-ending upward escalator because it is SNEERINGLY impossible. Are you seriously trying to make me confuse a suicidal guy Google????
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Ok let's go back.

The truth is, there are only this much of times that you can mentally convince or do little things for yourself to be happy, but other subjects (people, pets, activities) can easily make you much happier instantly. The reason is simply because we are wired as social animals from the beginning, our share of happiness can only be magnified when shared with members of our community. 


With that said, you need a healthy balance between both personal and social happiness (that's what I coined them) and any disequilibrium will --> sense of emptiness --> start of unhappiness


Omg. I didn't know I've lived that long to have figured out the balance of happiness. I thought I was just bullshitting but I think I actually made sense. Is that how I've been surviving my education all along?


Anyway here we go. For the following, I will go through some of the things I do to cheer myself and as for the social happiness, you JUST have to get yourself out and meet your friends.
Everything else will come naturally. 



Personal Happiness

  • Write something. Letters, diaries, poems. Hand-written is the best because somehow it will make things feel really special


  • Listen to classical music everyday. My mum asked me to do this in her letter to me when I turned twenty-one. Yes she's cute like that. I always go for Ludovico Einaudi - Una Mattina.It doesn't make me super cheery flower-throwing and all, but I always feel very very calm in my heart after listening to it. Try listening to it in a dark quiet room by yourself, the healing effect is really amazing. On a side note, try making yourself some tea as well. My favourite now is TWG Black Tea with a slice of lemon. So so lovely :)
  • Read a (comical) book. Reading is always magical to me, though I am totally guilty of my poor consistency.


My favourite book so far this year is Let's Pretend This Never Happened, an autobiography that almost gave me courage to fully embrace my weirdness because I didn't know it could be such a treasure in today's world, where everyone is encouraged to behave and think the same.



 If you prefer fiction, you might want to try Where'd You Go, Bernadette, its totally chic cover is an instant mood-booster. 


  • Cook a meal for yourself and your loved ones. Even if it's only mediocre, the eating will make you happy. Or if that's too much effort, try making something simple and pretty.

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Tumblinbumblincrumblincookie (Yes quite a mouthful I know) is my favourite food-instagrammer for the moment and you can check out her beautiful blog here. Get ready to fall in love. 


  • Shopping.
    I didn't believe this either, cos I always brand myself as a non-superficial female individual whose mood will not be easily lifted just because of a material gain. BUT NAH IT'S NOT TRUE. I am an equally superficial girl at heart apparently and I believe all girls have that side to them, just of varying degree.

    Go out and hunt for your clothes/cosmetics/bags/shoes, or if town is too far for you, go do some online digging. Just remember not to splurge or buy things you wont actually use in the future. 

    • Sleep early. Wake up early.
    Sleep early (e.g. Before 1130pm) and wake up early (e.g. before 730am). Sufficient sleep makes you less grumpy and an early day makes you more productive. You ever wonder why you were so much happier as kid? Maybe that's part of the reason.

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    Hopefully you will find this useful at one of those days and I know me myself will definitely refer back to this post frequently as well. It more or less ends here and actually everything I said has been said before somewhere else. 

    The rule is: you just have to STOP being grumpy at the world and at yourself, just start doing ONE THING from this list.



    May you be happy.