Thoughts on Happiness

Man, I feel like I'm so behind with all of my blogging, having only one (I guess 2 now). But you gotta start somewhere, right? So this past weekend was conference weekend.  I actually had tickets for the conference center in Salt Lake for Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon, but it just never quite seemed to work out going up there or anything, so I actually ended up going to Logan to visit my aunt and uncle for the weekend, with my other aunt and her family that lives in Pleasant Grove.  Yes, I was a little disappointed that I couldn't go to Salt Lake, but it ended up being a really awesome weekend.  My aunt in Logan is a hair stylist, so she did my hair, and we did nails, went shopping, watched conference, etc.  What more could you ask for, right?

So conference was so wonderful, of course.  But a large part of that is because I really prepared myself for it this time, and wow what a difference it makes!  I found a common theme in all of the talks, which was a message of hope even when times are tough.  It's always so comforting for me to know that even general authorities go through hard times, and that they need to hear messages of hope just as much as I do.  I felt so uplifted and encouraged.  One of the talks mentioned that we need to live simpler lives, and be happier with what we have and express gratitude for all of our many blessings.  Then in my aunts house, they had a quote displayinig that said "Happiness is not having what you want, it's wanting what you have."  I have had this thought occur to me multiple times over the past month or so, and I really believe that it is SO true.  Living a simple life makes you realize that the most important things in life aren't for sale.  As long as you have the necessities of life, and people that love you, life is good.  And fortunately, I have been blessed with a lot of those.  

My thoughts don't stop at pondering the secret to happiness, however.  With happiness, I have thought a lot lately about the key to being miserable as well.  I have decided that a main thing to being unhappy is selfishness.  I think this because having happy, healthy relationships is SO important, and succeeding in this leads to such joy.  And being selfish is pretty much the number one thing that prevents people from having happy healthy relationships.  Remember, this is just my opinion, so of course some may disagree (but they'd be wrong of course ;) ).  When people are selfish, friendships can't flourish, marriages can't succeed, family ties are strained, etc.  I think we're getting the point here.  I just think that when you're in a relationship, whether it be with a friend, husband, wife, child, or sibling, love is a key factor.  For me, love means that the other person's well-being is a higher priority than your own.  And of course, the other person would think that your well-being is more important than theirs.  That's how it really should work, and is a lot harder to do than just saying it, of course.  If both of you are on the same page though, everything would be amazing, right?  Obviously I am not perfect at this, and most people aren't because most of us by nature are selfish beings and have to work to think of others before ourselves.  

Since no one is perfect at this, forgiveness is also an important factor.  This can be so amazingly hard (at least for me!), which of course means its all that more important!  As much as I'd like to discuss my thoughts on forgivness, I want to keep my blogs on a somewhat short and sweet status, so I think I'm done for the day.  If you can't tell, this blog is more about how I think and feel about things rather than what I actually do, but I'll try and throw a little of that in every once in a while.  So until next time!!