Spoiler Alert: Life Will Suck Until You Start Romanticizing It
The mindset shift that will take your life from bland to grand
“Stop waiting for Friday, for summer, for someone to fall in love with you, for life. Happiness is achieved when you stop waiting for it and make the most of the moment you are in now.” — Anonymous
How often do you truly feel happy?
The type of happiness where you genuinely feel content with your life.
The type of happiness where you are so at peace with your past, present, and future that you are only focused on your enjoyment of the present moment.
That doesn’t happen too often, right?
Here’s the biggest myth about happiness.
Happiness doesn’t come from external circumstances, obtaining new possessions, falling in love, or reaching new achievements.
Those things can bring you short-term happiness, but if you base your happiness on them, they’ll leave you on a rollercoaster of emotional instability.
When we give external things and events that we can’t completely control power over our feelings, we forgo our own ability to control them.
I don’t know about you, but I prefer being able to choose happiness whenever I want.
Call me petty, but I’d rather not have other people or things have puppet strings on my enjoyment of life.
I say this to make the point that true happiness comes solely from within and should never be based on externalities.
Your attitude regarding the life you already have is what determines your level of happiness, not your constant search for things that will make you happier.
If you aren’t happy right now, it doesn’t mean that you need more in your life.
Unhappiness simply means that you need to love what you already have more.
I call this “romanticizing life.”
Why should you romanticize life?
Well, not only is gratitude scientifically proven to boost happiness, but energetically speaking, loving life opens you up to receive more blessings from the universe/God.
Put yourself in the shoes of the universe/God — if you had to choose someone to bestow great blessings upon, who would you choose?
Would you choose the person who is grateful and positive for their current life or the person who constantly complains about their life and asks for more?
You would obviously choose the grateful person.
This is why it is so important to fall in love with the life you already have — it allows you to receive everything good the world has to offer.
As long as you are in a state of dissatisfaction with life, you will repel the positive changes in your life that you desire.
Simply put, anything that you seek in this world will run away from you at lightning speed as long as you feel that you “need” it to be happy.
Whatever you currently desire will only walk into your life when you decide that you don’t need it to be happy.
You have to stop worrying about external circumstances in order to enjoy life.
You can’t live life always chasing after the next big thing that you think will make you happy. You will only be wasting your time.
Nothing will make you happy in the long term until you learn to be happy with just yourself and the life you’ve been given.
Serious truth: you don’t need ANYTHING more than what you already have to be happy.
Period. End of story.
There are children in third world countries who live on less than a dollar a day that finds reasons to enjoy their lives, even though they don’t have what we would consider basic human needs.
These children may not get to go to school, eat a full meal every night, get medicine when they’re sick, or even have a bed to sleep on, but they still wake up every morning and work to support their families with a positive attitude.
They don’t focus on the bad circumstances in their life but instead focus on reaping as much enjoyment as they can from the few good things they do have.
All the while, we’re out here in our nice homes, blessed with countless opportunities to learn, grow, and make money, but still complaining because we want trivial things such as material possessions, wealth, and validation.
How embarrassing.
Want to humble yourself instantly the next time you feel the need to complain about not having something? Imagine complaining about that to someone in a third-world country.
Seriously — imagine yourself complaining about not getting enough validation, not having clear skin, or not having the car of your dreams to someone who doesn’t even know where their next meal will come from or when it will be.
If you want to realize how trivial your desires are and get a good perspective on how difficult life is for children and their families in these countries, I would highly recommend watching the following documentary.
In this documentary, four college students looking to gain perspective on what living in poverty is like travel to Guatemala for two months, giving themselves a budget of a dollar a day to live off of.
Watching these students experience hunger, hard labor, parasitic infections from unsanitary drinking water, and discomfort from sleeping on a dirt floor every night made me realize just how lucky I am to have the life that I have.
It’ll make you feel the same way too.
Sometimes all we need is a little bit of perspective in order to see the world in a different, better way.
We know when our next meals will be, we have safe places to sleep every night, we don’t have to worry about getting deadly infections from drinking water, we have access to medical care, and we have the opportunity to get an education.
If people who live in horrifically subpar conditions can still find happiness, you have absolutely no excuse to not be content with your life.
So start romanticizing things and enjoy life as it is right now.
It doesn’t matter how mundane you think your life is.
With the right mindset, you can turn what some people would view as a dull life into a beautiful life full of passion, love, and splendor.
You can make every day the best day of your life by simply taking joy in every little thing you already have.
Look at the beautiful world around you, the clothes you’re wearing, the technology you’re using right now, and the incredible people around you.
Now, look at the clock. You still have time to fall in love with life!
It’s not too late to change things.
You can make the decision to view everything in front of you with an open perspective and a heart full of wonder and excitement.
Live every part of your day, even the “mundane” moments like brushing your teeth or driving to work, with passion and enthusiasm.
How? Constantly remind yourself of how lucky you are to have what you have in your life — take nothing for granted.
Know you are blessed beyond belief.
One of the best ways to romanticize life is to count your blessings.
You are blessed to be able to brush your teeth in the morning and avoid getting gum disease or having your teeth fall out.
You are blessed to have a job that pays consistently and puts food on the table.
You are blessed to have people in your life that love you and care about you.
You are blessed to have comfortable shoes and clothes to wear.
You are blessed to wake up every morning and have the opportunity to live life the way you want to each day!
Everything in life can be a blessing if you look at it as such.
Your attitude, not your circumstances, determines how fulfilled you are.
One of the most beautiful things about life is that no one is forcing you to live a certain way or stay the same person forever — you can change whenever you want to.
You can make the decision to view your life from a new lens and be happy with what you have.
You will never have as much control over the circumstances in your life as you want, so you have two options every morning:
- Option 1: Go through the day like it isn’t anything special, take what you have for granted, and don’t allow yourself to feel good because all you can think about is what you want and still don’t have.
- Option 2: Go through the day like it is the best day of your life, express gratitude for everyone and everything, focus on the good in the world around you, and feel amazing!
If it wasn’t already painfully obvious, Option 2 is the option you should choose every morning. Option 2 is how you romanticize life.
You already have a beautiful life, you just have to start seeing it that way!
So, to sum it all up:
- External things such as achievements, validation, and money can only bring us short-term happiness. If you want consistent happiness, you have to look internally and change your attitude on life.
- Happiness is feeling content and at peace with the present moment. You can’t be happy if you’re living in the past or future.
- When we give external things and events that we can’t completely control power over our feelings, we forgo our own ability to control them. Take your power back!
- Falling in love with the life you already have puts you in an energetic state where you are open to receiving blessings from the universe/God.
- You don’t need anything more than what you already have to be happy — there are children living in third-world countries who don’t know when their next meal will be but still find reasons to enjoy life.
- Romanticize life by viewing it with an open perspective and heart full of wonder and excitement — go through even the “mundane” moments with gratitude and passion.
- Take nothing for granted and count your blessings daily.
- Never forget that your life is already beautiful, exciting, and fulfilling — all you have to do is start seeing it that way.
If you’d like to read more than three of my articles per month, click the link below to purchase a Medium membership for only $5 so you can stay up to date with all my latest work! The cost of the membership directly supports me and all of the other incredible writers on this platform. I love and appreciate you, and thank you for supporting me on my writing journey.
