Find Your Happy Place: Embracing Your Inner Child

We live in a world where overwhelming things can happen almost on a daily basis. Whether events in the news or circumstances in our personal lives are causing us anxiety, it can detract from our overall happiness. Which can necessitate us to seek out things, people or places that contribute to our comfort and joy. It’s important and beneficial to our wellbeing to find even something small to make us feel good, especially on a day that we feel down. This column is going to be devoted to exploring all those somethings-large and small-that can provide that feeling.

This week, I was feeling a little stressed about accomplishing all my work tasks, and had an overall sense of grumpiness from the constant rainy gray weather, so I decided I needed to make it a point to snap out of my funk.

Sometimes a good way for me to do this is to figure out how to reclaim the carefree feeling of being a kid without the weight of seemingly endless responsibilities. So I decided that I was going to take myself for a ride on a carousel. But not just any carousel, instead of the traditional horses this one was aquatic-themed where you ride an angelfish or butterfly fish instead of a stallion.

I picked a luminous pink angelfish, settled in and before long found myself grinning like an idiot without a care in the world. A feeling that stayed with me the rest of the day, regardless of how silly it seemed that three minutes on a children’s ride could boost my mood. It reminded me of all the times as a kid, I’d wait in line with my mom to ride the carousel at an amusement park and she’d very seriously ask me which horse I was going to choose. She always had hers picked out long before we reached the front of the line and when it was our turn to board the ride we’d race to our pre-ordained horses before someone else could get to them. “Made it,” she’d yell scooping me up onto my horse and making sure I was safely ensconced before climbing onto her own. Around and around we’d go, grinning at each other, waving to my dad and brother in the crowd. I love those memories. And today was one of those days that I needed to wade through the stress of my week and retrieve that feeling of unadulterated joy.

Smart Girls, tell us what you did or want to do this week to feel happy!

Header photo cred: Greg McGoon

Other photos furnished by Danielle Sepulveres