How to be happy: part 3

It was the fall of 2006 and every aspect of my life was in the pits. I hadn’t slept through the night since my daughter’s birth, about 26 months before. I was ghost writing a difficult book, one that required every amount of my patience as I refereed arguments between the author and editor.

I wanted my husband to drop dead. I wanted my mother to stop complaining to me about my husband. I felt completely ineffective and overwhelmed as a mother. I couldn’t seem to make ends meet financially. Every month we spent more than we earned, and our credit card balance kept going up as a result. If anything disturbed my sleep—including my husband’s snores or the dog flapping his ears—I woke in a rage, one that I was not proud of and that made me feel deeply guilty—especially when I smacked the dog across his snout for daring to want to go out in the middle of the night.

I’d lost touch with my two closest friends, who’d both moved to other states. I hadn’t gone to church in years. I hated my house, especially when it was stink bug season or rodent season or carpenter bee season.

One day, I found myself on the floor of a public restroom, my knees pulled into my chest, tears streaming down my cheeks. I was crying for no reason. I was crying for hundreds of reasons.

My life was a mess, and I didn’t know where to start.

I started by signing up for a meditation class. I attended each week without fail. I was so sleep deprived that I fell asleep anytime I lay on my back and closed my eyes. My chances of learning how to meditate in my condition at first seemed hopeless, but over a period of weeks I began to feel calmer. With that newfound calm, I realized that my marriage was about to dissolve. So I ordered a bunch of marital improvement books.

A year after that, I realized that my friendships were not as strong or authentic as I would have liked, so I addressed those, too. I repaired my relationship with my mother.

One Sunday morning, I went to church.

And slowly, one step at a time, I dug my life out of the general category of mess and became a happy, functioning member of society again. You can, too.

Where to Start

It doesn’t really matter where you start, as long as you start somewhere. There’s no best way to start improving your life. There’s no best area to work on first. Just start with one change—one meaningful change.

By meaningful, I’m not talking about making yourself happy by rearranging your furniture, buying a new outfit, listening to happy music, or sending yourself flowers. Although such things might give you a temporary lift, they don’t change your life in a meaningful, continual way. They are temporary mood-boosters. They don’t solve problems. They postpone them.

Use this advice:

Think of your life in categories. My categories are: Parenthood, marriage, friendships/relationships, career, and personal and spiritual growth. I try to make sure I balance and feel good about those categories at all times. Whenever I start to feel resentful, bored, overwhelmed, frustrated, run-down, or angry, I think about which of those categories is causing the problem. Am I stressed about work? Am I irritated with my husband? Am I overwhelmed with motherhood? Do I need more time to myself? Such questions help me to narrow my focus, so I know which life role needs the most attention now.

Break problems down into small solutions. You can’t fix a bad marriage in 24 hours. You can’t cure the terrible 2s in a week. You can’t change careers instantly. You can, however, make one small request of your spouse today. For instance, you might ask for help with the dinner clean up. You can decide to implement a new nightly toy clean up ritual.  You can surf around Monster.com immediately. Take small, doable steps toward your goal.

Expect failure. Not every solution will work. Toy clean up night might evolve into Scream At My Child To Clean Up Her Toys Night. A simple request to help with dinner clean up might be met with an angry, “Don’t I do enough for you already?” You can’t predict any outcome. You can’t ever know whether a solution will work-until you try. When one doesn’t work, learn from the journey, and change course.

Over time, if you learn from your mistakes and persevere, your life will continually improve. Eventually, you’ll come to that blissful place where most areas of your life are “as good as it gets” and you feel confident knowing that you can deal with any problem life brings your way.
Have you successfully made big life changes? Share your advice for others in the comments area.

This post is part 3 of a how to be happy series. Read the How to Be Happy series from the beginning.

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