3 Signs You’re Learning to Own Your Happiness

So you can mold your life into one you’ll be sad to die from

There’s infinite ways for us to be who we aren’t, but only one way to be who we are.

It can be a neverending battle to stay true to every part of ourselves. Even when we know who we are, sometimes, when we’re exhausted, stressed, or desperate, we can slip into someone else.

So, here’s three ways to remind you of how far you’ve come:

You question your name

As infants, labels are stamped on us. Black letters chiseled into our soft skin that’ll define everything about us.

One label that’ll dominate your identity is your name.

The title on your jar.

An odd spelling will mean you’ll have to spell your name, and tell people how to pronounce it. Again. Slide down in your chair as the teacher mangles your name during attendance. Again.

Decide to let people mispronounce it or not. Again.

We don’t choose our names. Who can ask an infant?

But, as you grow closer to discovering your happiness, you may question your name.

Whether you like it. Whether it fits you. Whether you want to keep it.

And you may find that the final decision isn’t as important as the bravery to ask in the first place.

Because that’s where happiness starts.

In questioning everything you think you know.

Your life is fun again

When you’re everyone but who you were at conception, life is a hellcat in a box drowning in an ocean.

The pressure to monitor another person, break yourself into someone else’s shape, and stuff stray pieces of you back in rips the life out of you.

I know. I spent decades trying to convince my soul it was mistaken. That it didn’t know me. And it screamed for years that I was wrong.

And I was.

But, when you open your lid — even the tiniest turn of your jar’s cover, life smiles on you again.

A little smirk at first.

Then a close-lipped smile.

And then, all teeth. Crinkles at the eyes. Bellow in the laugh.

And you wake up.

To all the life you’ve been burying.

And bathe in brilliant, you-shaped sunshine.

Your work isn’t separate from your life

Many of us spend our working hours waiting to get home to do what we really wanna do — write, program, draw, bake. Whatever activity sparks our joy inferno.

We watch the clock, daydream during the breaks, then run out that prison as fast as our meat sticks can carry us.

To get to life.

I know. I did the same thing for too many years. My colleagues meant little, and the money made me angry. It only reminded me of how many hours of my life I’d wasted for some dead guys printed on cotton and linen. Everything was meaningless, and I was bored.

But, when you own your happiness, you fit your job to you, get another, or leave to make your own supply and demand.

And in doing this, the two parts become one.

Your work becomes what you love. What ignites your inferno.

And your pocket of happiness will hang lower.

As your list of discarded labels grows higher.