Finding Happiness In Simple Things

Please raise your hand if you have recently found yourself feeling unhappy about something. 🖐

That’s my hand raised above. I’d be shocked if most people, if not everyone, reading this post thought to raise their hand as well. If happiness is the ultimate goal in life I’ve also found it to be quite an elusive thing for almost anyone to achieve for any length of time. It seems as though there is always something that gets between us and happiness. Often we predicate happiness on some grande, life changing experience that we wish would happen. I’m talking about things like meeting the love of our lives, coming into significant financial wealth, taking the trip of a lifetime or finding our dream job. Although all of the things that I mentioned are possible it’s also likely that their occurrence will be infrequent and their effect on your happiness will be temporary. So what about all of that time in between those grande moments? Is it possible to be happy every single day? I say it is possible, but only if we learn to find happiness in the simple things in life.

The simple things in life that I’m thinking of are things we can experience on a daily basis. Ironically these are also things that we tend to take for granted. If you live in the United States like I do then there are many simple things that you probably take for granted because our society has advanced greatly both socially and technologically. But just because something seems ordinary to us doesn’t mean that we can’t feel happiness due to its presence in our lives. It doesn’t mean that something simple can’t make us smile and enjoy a moment of happiness. Below are just a few things from a very personal perspective that I think are simple things worth being happy about in any given day.

This morning I woke up. On the particular morning when I wrote this I certainly did not get enough sleep. It’s my own fault though. I went to bed later than usual and I know that no matter what time I go to bed my body will wake me up at a certain time…and it did. But here’s the thing. I woke up, which means I’m alive! That’s something to be happy about every single day. Not only that but the sheets of my bed were clean and smelled nice. So the period between waking up and getting up was an enjoyable one.

After I woke up I really needed some coffee, and since I had a can of ground coffee and a working espresso machine I was able to make a warm espresso and mix it with hot water that I boiled on the stove. Within about ten minutes I had a cup of hot coffee in my hands. A fresh, hot cup of coffee in the morning! Call me silly but that makes me happy. I also had a couple of eggs that I could fry on the stove, bread that I could toast and cream cheese to spread on the toast. So I was even happier to have a full breakfast.

After breakfast I was able to enjoy something incredibly precious. And that was free time. Free time is such a gift in an age where so much is going on and happening so quickly! It’s so wonderful to be able to consider, ”What shall I do with my time for the next few hours?” I know that such a question can be a burden if all you have is free time but almost all of us do have way too much of our time spoken for. Another wonderful thing about free time is that I feel free to think about how to do things that make me happy in a given day. Simple things of course!

I decided that at one point I wanted to pick up my acoustic guitar and play a little bit. I have to play and sing (if I decide to sing a little) quietly because I live in an apartment. That’s okay. What a joy to be able to play a bit of music! I’m not that great of a guitar player (or a singer for that matter) but just a few minutes of playing takes my focus off more stressful things and brightens my mood. I decided to listen to some music too while I made my bed and cleaned up after breakfast. Whether it’s played (even poorly) or listened to music is such a great, simple way to be happy.

I could go on quite a bit (and I certainly would if that would make me happy right now 😉) but I’m confident that you get the point of this post. So now I shall throw it over to you. Ask yourself the following questions. What simple things are there in my every day life that I can be happy about? What things make me happy that I have avoided, or forgot about doing? How can I reorder my life in such a way that there are more opportunities to be happy about simple things?

Don’t worry, be happy.

Bobby McFerrin