Yes, its been a while - its been the holiday season afterall!! Generally, this time of year is a great one for happiness, Christmas and buying presents for loved ones confirms what I was saying in my previous blog posts - doing things for others makes you happy.
But then the new year comes along, and all around me I hear of all the pledges and resolutions people are making for the upcoming year (loosing weight is on top of everyones list it seems), and I like that positivity I see in people. The hopes and aspirations that everything will be good this year. This year, everything will be different, I will get to be a size 8....
And like every year, by the end of January, the hope is gone, and despair kicks in. Because the will power is down to zero, and all those aspirations instead of making us feel good, now make us feel bad. This really makes me think about new years resolutions - often they are the same year on year, and often they fail. I stopped making them years back.
A recent article in the Independent acknowledges this, and it kind of made me think about my own happiness adventure - is it like a news year resolution, and have I set myself up for disaster? Is the actual fact of pursuing happiness bound to make me miserable in the longer term? If you google "seeking happiness" and look at the images that emerge, its true - proverb after proverb says the same, seeking happiness is the path to unhappiness. I am not really waiting for happiness to spring up on me, I am already happy, but my initial question was, could I be happier? I know one of my first pledges was to keep this blog updated, and I haven't kept it updated as much as I wanted to - that makes me feel bad. Do I need to break up my happiness quest into smaller pieces that are easier to pursue? Do I need to give it up altogether - give me a week to think that through.
But then the new year comes along, and all around me I hear of all the pledges and resolutions people are making for the upcoming year (loosing weight is on top of everyones list it seems), and I like that positivity I see in people. The hopes and aspirations that everything will be good this year. This year, everything will be different, I will get to be a size 8....
And like every year, by the end of January, the hope is gone, and despair kicks in. Because the will power is down to zero, and all those aspirations instead of making us feel good, now make us feel bad. This really makes me think about new years resolutions - often they are the same year on year, and often they fail. I stopped making them years back.
A recent article in the Independent acknowledges this, and it kind of made me think about my own happiness adventure - is it like a news year resolution, and have I set myself up for disaster? Is the actual fact of pursuing happiness bound to make me miserable in the longer term? If you google "seeking happiness" and look at the images that emerge, its true - proverb after proverb says the same, seeking happiness is the path to unhappiness. I am not really waiting for happiness to spring up on me, I am already happy, but my initial question was, could I be happier? I know one of my first pledges was to keep this blog updated, and I haven't kept it updated as much as I wanted to - that makes me feel bad. Do I need to break up my happiness quest into smaller pieces that are easier to pursue? Do I need to give it up altogether - give me a week to think that through.
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