Hello!!!!!

Welcome to Why Not Be Happy. This isn’t your traditional positivity website. Yes, I hope that being more positive is a side effect of every time you engage, but that’s not why it exists. Why Not Be Happy is here so that we can all figure out ways to find the bright spots in life. Myself included! I think we all need this right now. Let me start by telling you a little more about me.

I used to be what people would call a “born optimist”. For the majority of my life, I’ve always tried to see the best view in every situation and spread happiness to others. It’s why I started Why Not Be Happy in 2012 - hoping to have a blog and small business that reflected the values that I felt made me who I am.

But life has a funny way of changing direction. I realized in those first few years that sometimes blindly encouraging happiness can have its downfalls. One of the biggest? Many of the things that happen to us in life (and sometimes, even the way we filter and respond to the things that happen to us in life) can be completely out of our control! Yes, you can choose to spin certain situations, but that doesn’t make any of your associated feelings less valid. Sometimes a situation is just really screwed up, and the best way to deal is to be sad, upset or even furious. And sometimes even when you do see the positive side of a bad hand you were dealt, our past experiences, and even our brain chemistry refuses to let us respond in a positive way.

I never want anyone to engage in a Why Not Be Happy conversation, or visit this website and feel badly that they aren’t presently happy! Instead I want to start conversations where people find and share what gives them moments of happiness… what helps them look at things differently… what makes them find a smile, even when times seem dark.

Asking yourself “why not be happy?” isn’t meant to be a rebuke, but rather a way of fighting to make it through.

For many of us, it’s hard to be happy most of the time. Just as you can’t clinically be diagnosed as “happy”, there’s no happy pill any of us can take. Happiness isn’t the opposite of depression or sadness; it’s just a feeling or physical and mental response to a moment in time. Happiness is fleeting, and I think that means we need to cherish it whenever we can. And since we can’t bottle those moments up, the next best thing to do is figure out what caused them so we can try to find those happy moments again. I also refer to them as “bright spots” or “glimmers”, and basically they are the opposite of “triggers”, or things that cause you to feel negative, sad, and upset. The bright spots & glimmers we push for with this platform are micro-moments that give you a little bit of awe… a little bit of hope… a little bit of happiness. Because once you infuse more of those bright spots into your life, the more life feels manageable. And even, at times, happy.

I’m on the search for that every single day. Join me.