Guest blogger: Victoria Tate

‘What day is it?’

‘It’s today,’ squeaked Piglet.

‘My favorite day,’ said Pooh.”

― A.A. Milne

This morning I woke up grateful. And hungover but that’s embarrassingly normal but mostly grateful.

As much as I hate (okay sometimes love) to gloat, my life is good, y’all. Your life is good too, you just may not know it yet. This is why I am currently writing this piece; to do my best to help you become a better, happier, and more capable you, because you deserve to enjoy your life.

I have written a lot about my journey of self-discovery over the past two years. The therapist I was working with during that time and I recently had our last session, as she is a badass and is moving to Connecticut to go work at Yale. During this session, we talked a lot about how far I had come. When I first started my own quest for happiness, I was depressed, heartbroken, underweight, unhealthy, and broke. I hated living, but I knew that wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. I sought out to make these amazingly huge goals for myself so that one day I could live the picture-perfect as I’d always imagined.

Setting goals- especially clearly defined goals- is a really good thing. Practically everyone with any authority on the subject agrees that setting goals is a huge recipe for success. The problem, however, is when you become so focused on the goal that you forget to enjoy the present. For the longest time, I felt like I couldn’t be happy with what I had because it wasn’t everything I always wanted. One of the best and amazing lessons I learned was to really take the time to enjoy what I do have in life and do things that bring me happiness.

Recently I went to a Beyoncé concert. Beyoncé is my celebrity BFF and pretty much my hero. She is confident, beautiful, unapologetic, and proud. She started talking about her track “Me, Myself and I” on her first solo album.

“That album talks about the most important relationship you have, and that’s the one you have with yourself.”

That track is all about being your own best friend. I am not ashamed to say that I cried because it is so true. You have to live with yourself every second of every day. Why not fall madly, deeply in love?

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

-Dr. Seuss

Everyone has bad days. Bad things happen to everybody, whether or not you deserve them. But good things happen too, and many of us are in a habit of taking those good things for granted. We are so focused on the bigger picture we forget to relish in the small things that bring us joy. We are so disappointed in ourselves for not waking up early enough to work out before work, that we forget the reason why was because we were out late the night before laughing with friends. We are so disappointed not to have the career and the family we’ve always dreamed of that we forget about the experiences we’ve had and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.

I like drinking wine and I love craft cocktails. I love to go out and socialize with friends. I like to read and write in my journal. I like to watch murder mysteries that freak me out when I’m alone. I like how warm my boyfriend is because I’m always cold. I like blasting gangster rap while I do my hair and makeup. I like to travel as much as possible, and go to concerts and watch plays. I like texting my mom and my best friend all day every day about random things.

I am blessed to have a life where I get to do those things.

I’m going to be 28 in a month. I definitely thought by 28 I’d have a kid and a career and a graduate degree. I definitely thought I would have seen the world. I definitely have days where I’m disappointed in myself. I definitely wake up sometimes and feel fat and ugly and annoyed with the universe. That is human nature, and everyone has the right to those days. Like my favorite Grey’s Anatomy quote by Meredith Grey- “Not everybody has to be happy all the time. That’s not mental health. That’s crap.”

Ultimately, it isn’t about being happy and perfect and dandy all the time. It is about having more good days than bad. It is about not letting bad moments become bad days if we can avoid them.
I am not here to say that happiness is always easy. If you are suffering from depression I am not here to tell you that you try your hardest to be happy, because I know it definitely doesn’t work that way and your pain should not be minimized. What I am here to tell you is to not be ashamed to go and get help. See a therapist, get on medication. Do whatever it takes. Don’t allow the depression to convince you that there isn’t a brighter side. A friend told me one day that having depression is like having a bug in your ear telling you that your misery is who you are. I am here to tell you that miserable is not who you are. Misery is what you are feeling, and with the right help, you can get through this dark time.

I have bipolar disorder and I have bad days for sure. Part of my journey has been convincing myself not only that I could have a good life in spite of my illness, but that I deserved it. Sometimes the good days feel like a fraud because I wonder if they are just because I am on medication. I had to convince myself not to overthink it but instead just be grateful for them. I had to teach myself to be mindful and live in the moment instead of always over-complicating things by looking at every aspect of the big picture.

Two years ago I woke up one day and began to change my life and mindset forever. The revelation that I deserved happiness and that it was in my control literally hit me like a ton of bricks. I woke up that morning and made a vow that changed my life. Absolutely nothing happened overnight, besides having a new sense of determination. Being happy is hard work. It takes a strong mind and a lot of appreciation for the small things to find joy in this tough world. I did it, though. I do it every day. And there is nothing superhuman or exceptionally wonderful about me. You can do it too.

So, by all means, set those goals and dream big. Work as hard as you can to meet them, because you do deserve everything you’ve ever wanted and more. Most importantly- however- don’t forget to find the small perfections in the imperfection. You don’t want to wake up one day old and gray and realize that you have this picture-perfect life you’ve always dreamed of, but somehow you forgot to enjoy it. The most significant part of life is happiness.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all, I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

– Agatha Christie

-Elizabeth Price

Published May 27, 2016

http://www.victoria-tate.com/2016/05/finding-perfection-imperfect-guide-happiness/

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