There is no path to happiness, happiness IS the path.

"There is no path to happiness, happiness is the path"-Buddha

I purchased a greeting card that said this at Trader Joes the other day, just because I loved what it represented.  No one in their right mind wakes up and says to themselves "I hope that I am not happy today".  If you do please call me right now because I would like to pick your brain a little bit, then make you laugh your butt off.

"I just want to be happy" is what a majority of us hope for throughout our lives.  Some days we have really hard, sad, and frustrating days.  The others are GREAT, quite possibly the "BEST DAY EVER!" I want you to look back on all of those days and connect the dots.  When I do that, there is not ONE hard day that can be missed for me to obtain the great days.    Along side the days of pain and saddness came the days of laughter and sunshine, and this is what makes my happiness great!

My path to Happiness is so much different than yours.

Do not compare paths.  Do not look at someone elses happiness and think "That is what I need to be happy", because it's not.  When we start to compare and judge others is when we get lost from our own path. Stay true to what makes you happy.  Smile more often, even when you don't feel like it.    I am that crazy girl cheering at mile 23 of a marathon telling people to SMILE because it makes the running easier and less painful.  I have to confess-- smiling does NOT stop your legs from going numb and your knees from aching.  Some people look at me with the expression of  "Oh yeah?? why aren't you out here running?  Shut your face happy person".  Others smile, and for a moment, they believe that the pain will fade away and it will be just as joyous of a run as it was at mile one.  If you believe hard enough, it actually does!  

Wake up and tell yourself that today is going to be the BEST DAY EVER.

Drink your tea or coffee in the sun shine, or open all of the windows to hear the rain fall outside.  Embrace the rain to appreciate the sun.

When my brothers and I were little our mother used a magic trick to make us not scared of the storms.   When the rain clouds began to roll in, my mom would look out the window and say "It looks like a great day to bake cookies".   As the rain would fall and the thunder and lightning would begin to play it's music, we would be in the kitchen making rows and rows of cookies as Elton John would be playing in the background just enough to distract us from the "scary noises" outside.  By adjusting the environment my mother took a scary situation and turned it into a memory full of laughter, love, and excitment.  There is not a rain storm that goes by where I don't smell the fresh baked cookies from my memory. To this day I still bake a fresh batch of cookies when it storms.

There is no end to happiness, which is why we need to start viewing it as the journey and not the destination. Stop worrying about what yours looks like and what others may have that you don't, you have so much in your life that others don't have as well. You are beautiful, amazing, and worth it.

Don't forget to laugh, cry, dance, sing, call your loved ones, or eat chocolate today!

Do what you need to do to have the Best Day Ever.

I am going to start mine off with a run--- I hope that those strangers are ready for my HIGH FIVES!

Marey