“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you think. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, difficult as it is…You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”

~Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Just like on my social media accounts – I post, share, and write about things that I’m passionate about. I write about things I struggle with and issues that I’m working on personally. I NEVER claim to have anything figured out or to be good at any of it. I’m just learning and sharing what’s on my heart.

Over the years, I have had several people throw my facebook posts back in my face when they are upset with me. As if just because I post uplifting, positive things – that I believe I’m a perfect, healed human who has everything I post about nailed down in my own life. Quite the contrary. I post things that I am needing to read and learn myself. I post and share things that resonate with me and that I need reminders of. I used to let it get to me and my ego would get SO hurt and defensive right away. But I know that people get triggered and react in certain ways that actually have nothing to do with me.

Over the last year I’ve really been working on not letting the actions of other people affect what I believe to be true about myself. I stumble a lot still and my ego tries to protect me (falsely), but I recover a lot quicker these days. Someone wants to dislike me? Let them.

I saw this quote today and it just made so much sense to me. It really went along with my last two posts I made here. You know when you’re thinking about something a lot, you see and hear more relating to it? Law of attraction maybe? I think when we are open to growing and healing parts of ourselves, we find what we need to learn in so many areas of our lives. You stumbled across the right book, the right social media post, a song that gets shared, a story from a friend…..the lessons are all here to help us grow.

Back to the quote….if it triggers you, try to identify why. That’s what I’ve been trying to do when something upsets me. “The fault finder will find faults even in paradise.” How true. We can waste our lives away wishing for the next thing. “Once I get here, once I get that job, once I make this much money, once I lose this much weight, once….once….once.” But we will never stop. Because true happiness doesn’t come along ONCE something external happens. Can money and security help alleviate stress in this life? Of course. But read the autobiographies of many, many wealthy people who were just as miserable, lonely, and depressed as someone with no money. Oh! Read Matthew Perry’s book – it is phenomenal and be prepared to cry a lot.

This life is what we make of it. The grass is only greener where you water it. You want to have good friends? Be a good friend. You want people to be kind to you? Be kind to others. Happiness can only happen inside. Because it’s not even a feeling and it’s not based on circumstance – it’s a choice. And this is coming from someone who has battled depression her entire life (still do). None of this comes easy to me at all. If you’re someone close to me – you absolutely know this. But I truly believe that no matter our circumstances, we can choose to find the joy in our days. We can decide to learn from our struggles. And we can make our lives count. If we believe our life sucks – it will. If we believe our lives are giant blessings – it will be.

I hope you can sit back after reading this and think about the joyful parts of your day. And if today was just really hard – that you can look forward to a brighter tomorrow – because we have that choice.

So much love –

Krysta