I often get questions like – ‘How can you be so positive?’, ‘Why are you so optimistic, don’t you worry about life?’, ‘Why do you smile all the time?’. I also get remarks like – ‘I gotta see you more often, you charge me with energy’, ‘I just have to look at your photos and I have a good day’, ‘Thank you for *something I posted on Facebook*, I really feel it inside’.
One of the greatest and funniest things that happened to me lately was making friends with this really lovely girl, Ruxandra. Well, Ruxandra added me on Facebook, out of nowhere. At some point, I asked on Facebook for help and she shared my status. The result was that through her, a friend of hers contacted me and helped me, so the natural thing to do was to send her a message to say thanks. Well, she was really friendly and we started talking more and more so we decided to meet at a teahouse one evening.
We had a really nice conversation, girl-talk, and I got to ask her how she found me on Facebook so she told me that a mutual friend liked one of my pictures and it appeared on her newsfeed. She then said that she liked my pic, she started looking through my photos and saw that I was smiling in everyone of them, that I had this positive vibe and that she likes and needs someone like that around her. Besides the fact that she is really cute and sweet, that made her even more adorable in my eyes 🙂 And also, she admitted that it was the first time she met with a girl she knew on Facebook. Aww! We kept in touch since then and became friends and we created this habit of seeing eachother once a week.
So, one time, Ruxandra asked me one of those questions I always get. Me being happy, as I told Ruxandra also, is just my natural mood. I like to see the bright side of life and not stress over, well, anything. I’ve come to see that everything passes, good things and bad things also. I try to enjoy the moment as much as I can, every moment even if it’s not that enjoyable. As an example, I even enjoyed having my knee broken. Yes, that might sound weird, but it was the best thing I could do back then.
Long story short, I broke my knee on a second date with this guy who, while wandering the streets, asked me to dance on the music of a street musician. Well, my heels got stuck in the pavement, so my knee broke when the guy tried to lean me back. I fainted immediately and when I woke up, I started laughing. Yes, it might not have been the best move, even the guy asked me if I was okay or if he also hurt my head. My answer to him was – ‘Come on, it’s really funny. You’ve literally got me head over heels on our second date. No other guy has managed to do that!’. Really now, what was I supposed to do then – yell, get mad at him, cry? He didn’t want to hurt me, it was an accident. So I just laughed and drove myself to the hospital to get my knee in a cast.
My point is, whatever the situation you are in, just stay calm. Of course there are moments you can’t, I am not happy ALL the time, it would be stupid to state that. Happy people are not people who smile all the time, but they are those who don’t stress over things they can’t change or control. Instead, they try to find answers and solutions to the issues they encounter.
My personal recipe? Here’s 10 things I like to practice as much as possible:
1. Don’t get easily angry. I understand that by being angry, I hurt myself and lose energy and time over nothing. One of my fav mottos in life is – ‘Getting angry at someone is punishing yourself for their issue.’
2. Don’t analyze everything. I just take things as they are. Good or bad, it’s happening for a reason, even if I don’t know it yet. I just let people and circumstances be. And move on when necessary.
3. If down, take time for yourself to lift your spirits. I realise that nobody can change my mood if I am not able to. Plus, why depend on others to have an effect on me?
4. Workout, a lot! Being physically active makes me more active, more happy, more cheerful, more confident and independent and less predisposed to engaging in unnatural behaviour.
5. Control is not everything. Even at age 16 I was afraid of the dark. It was my way of fearing the loss of control. Now? I just enjoy it. I enjoy the darkness and the fact that I can’t have control over everything in my life. There are too many people involved in it, I can’t control them, so why worry? And, of course there’s a quote that I love and that has become my motto – ‘You can’t control what others do to you, but you can control how you react to what you receive’.
6. Do not fear to apologize when you truly feel sorry or if you feel you did something wrong. Because life is not a game in which someone who apologizes loses. People don’t win and lose in life, and especially not when there’s ego involved.
7. Don’t make expectations of others. Why? Because they rarely live up to them. And in the end who gets hurt? Me. So I just take people as they are and enjoy them as much as I can. (Still, there’s difference between taking people as they come and them making a fool out of you, just because they see you accept them unconditionally.)
8. Be direct. If I have a problem with a person, I deal with that person. I communicate and express my feelings. I don’t get other people in the middle and I don’t search for answers outside my friendship or relationship. Also, comparing people and situation doesn’t do any good.
9. Know your limitations and know when to ask for help. I am far from being an expert in any field, but I do know some stuff about life. And I am really curios of finding out even more. Even so, I know that in some fields I don’t have any interest, so I have to get help with technical stuff, for example.
10. Be willing to take risks, even if you fail. Because to me, that means I have tried something in my life. My failures are the ones that will teach me, not a professor, not anything. No matter what the failure, I am sure that when I come out of that, I will be stronger and know more than I knew when I got in that.
Now, I do have some things I admit I have to work on. I’m not perfect, I’m a human being with feelings even if I learned to control them on some level. There were times when I met people or I was put in situations that taught me the things I still need to learn. Okay, so here they are:
1. I can’t save people. Really now, you can’t save anyone, no matter how much you love them. And in the end, you only hurt yourself, by trying to fix someone else. Even if a person knows they do have an issue, it’s not enough if they don’t act that way. (‘I didn’t need you to fix me, I needed to be there while I fix myself’.)
2. I have poor patience. It’s been my burden and I still fight it… ‘I want it all and I want it now’, that kind of thing.
3. I (sometimes) dwell on the past. I love my memories, I really do, and I like to think about them over and over again. Even of the people in my memories are not still present in my life, I could think and talk about them on any occasion. Well, it’s wrong. Yes, the memories are nice, but those people are no longer part of my life for a reason. And staying in the past and reliving those memories won’t do me any good in the present that I have to live and the future that I have to create. So, my advice to you and myself – learn from your past but then get the hell out of there 🙂
My personal saying? Smile for Today. Repeat Everyday.
