The Secret to Happiness

 I have the secret to a happy, fulfilling life. Are you ready to hear it? Okay, here we go...

In with the beautiful, out with the ugly.

I know, that might sound a little weird when talking about living a happy life. Does that mean you have to throw out last year's ugly Christmas sweater and fill your house with flowers? No! You could just as easily say in with the things that bring you joy and out with the things that don't, thank you Marie Kondo, but this blog is called 'Making Life Beautiful', so of course I'm going to keep it on brand.

So, let's define beautiful. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, it is defined as follows:

"1 : having qualities of beauty : exciting aesthetic pleasure 2 : generally pleasing : EXCELLENT"

For our purposes, we're going to go with the second definition because it's what's on the inside that counts, right? So, fill your life with things that are generally pleasing or excellent. Great. So, what is generally pleasing or excellent? Well, the answer will be different for everyone. To use another cliche, beauty is in the eye of a beholder. So, what is pleasing to you? Make a list and incorporate those things into your life.

What are your favorite colors? Make sure those are prevalent in your house. What are your favorite hobbies? Make sure they're accessible to you and make time to enjoy them. Who are your favorite people? Make time for them. 

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but the truth is, we get so caught up in everything we have to do, we forget to fill our life with the things we find beautiful. This is something I really struggled with working a 9 to 5 job. When I got of work, I was so mentally exhausted that I didn't want to do anything. I would just collapse on the couch or bed and watch TV because 'I needed to relax'. And while there isn't anything inherently wrong with that, I was so fixated on this idea of relaxing that I didn't make time for my hobbies and friends. My life was lacking beauty.

The things you find beautiful won't be in your life automatically, you have to be intentional and make time for them. And that means not becoming too distracted by all the neutrals in life. Neutrals, for our purposes, are things that you don't find either beautiful or ugly and are things that are a necessary part of your life. A word of caution, though; if you start letting your neutrals run your life, they can become ugly fast.

The Merriam-Webster definition of ugly is as follows:

"1 a : offensive to the sight : HIDEOUS b : offensive or unpleasant to any sense 2 : morally offensive or objectionable..."

As you can probably guess, the definition best suited for this discussion is 1b. And now we move on to the harder step of my secret to happiness: getting rid of everything ugly in our lives. This is harder for two reasons.

1.  Ugly is harder to define than beautiful. As I mentioned above, neutrals can easily become something ugly when they start taking over your life. This happened to me with my 9 to 5 job. It wasn't ugly to begin with, but when it started negatively impacting my life and my ability to fill my life with things that are beautiful, it became something ugly. Even aside from this, ugly things can easily seep into your life without you realizing in the form of a toxic relationship or an unhealthy obsession. Defining the ugly things in your life requires some deep introspection and it may take some time to uncover everything.
   
2.  There are some ugly things that you can't easily get rid of. The world isn't perfect, and there are some things that will always be a part of your life, not matter how much you may wish otherwise. So, what do you do? You set boundaries. You may not be able to cut some things out of your life completely, but by setting healthy boundaries for yourself and others, you can at least control them.

I know you were hoping for a secret that's a little more cut-and-dry, that you can easily do 100%. Unfortunately, there is no quick and easy fix for life. But if you're aware of what you're putting into your life (and what is being put into your life, regardless), you can start filling it with more things that you find beautiful and getting rid of, or setting boundaries for, the things that you find ugly.