Discovered While Traveling: The Secret to Happiness

I’ve now been in Rio long enough for me to finally sit down and take a breather. In the past few days, I’ve started Portuguese classes, attended a music festival, visited Christ (the Redeemer), been to two different beaches, been to the movies, had some amazing dinners, walked (a lot), met a ton of new friends, and just explored whatever and wherever my little heart desires.

Besides the fact that I’m always happiest when I’m near beaches and 80 degree weather, I really think I’ve discovered the secret to happiness. Every single morning I wake up and I do two things. I promise if everyone practiced these two things daily, we’d be so much happier! It’s really quite simple and for the life of me I can’t figure out why people only do these two things while they’re on vacation.

So basically, every day when I open my eyes and thank God for the opportunity to experience another great day in this thing called life, I do these two things:

1. Ask myself “What do I want to do today?” What will make me happy? Sometimes it’s a whole list of things, other days it may be just one thing that needs to happen to “make my day.”
2. [Insert answer to #1 here]. <— Do that.

So much of our life is spent doing what we think we should be doing, or what we think we have to do, that we often prioritize that above what we really want to do. And that’s pretty damn sad. Every morning here I ask myself the question above and then make it happen and I just realized – I should do this everyday! Why is it just restricted to days spent traveling? When I visited the Christ the Redeemer statue, I couldn’t help but realize how happy everyone was to be there. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t understand a single word out of their mouths. I understood their smiles, the squeals, the energy.  Even before we got up the mountain to the statue, people were excited just to be on the tram. And I know they’ve been on trains before. It’s because they’re just eager to be doing whatever the hell they wanted to do that day. And I can’t be mad at that. On the contrary, it makes me very very happy!

Is she smiling so hard because of Jesus?! Or Vacation?! Hmmm...

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