Allow Yourself to Feel

It is ok to be sad. It is ok to be angry. It is ok to be happy. It is ok to feel our emotions, to express them in appropriate ways and to admit that everything is not perfect all the time. Society may tell us that if we are not happy we are doing something wrong. Well society, I have to tell you it is the other way around. If we are happy every minute of every day then we are not experiencing the full range of what life has to offer. We are not going to the hard places, we are not challenging ourselves.

When we want to grow we have to go to the edge, to the hard places. We have to get frustrated, sad and angry to get where we want to be. Unfortunately when we start to feel these things we often have friends trying to cheer us up, to make us feel better because it is socially unacceptable not to be happy. However the longer we play at being happy when we do not feel it the longer we keep ourselves from truly being happy.

As we work to make the life for ourselves that we want, happiness will more often become the default emotional state, but that can take time. The pursuit of happiness covers a lot of ground and not all of it pretty fields of flowers. Some of the places the chase will lead us are dark and scary, cold and lonely, hot and angry, but that is the ground that we must cover to grow into change and get what we want out of life.

I want you to be happy, but I want you to really be happy. Happiness should not be a suit that sadness puts on to go out in public. To this end, feel what you feel in each moment then move on from there.