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The one person you owe a thing in this world is you and the one thing you owe yourself is to always be happy.

I don't care if it sounds selfish but the most important thing in this life is myself and my happiness. The whole world revolves around me first and if it makes me happy to make the world revolve around someone or something else then I'll gladly do but not at a detriment to my own happiness.

There are quite a few things that could happen when you put a host of other things ahead of yourself; the natural human instinct expects a form of reciprocal relationship with people we deal with. This means that I naturally expect you to treat me the same way I do you. So when I put your needs far above mine and you don't do the same for me, I'll tend to become disheartened and sad and every other bad feeling which are all very harmful to me. So in putting others before myself, I've ended up hurting myself and could go on regretting the actions especially when I forced myself to do it.

Now imagine the very selfish version of me that won't put anything else before me except it's something that makes me happy. We find happiness in sometimes very weird places and taking a risk for you might give me some sort of fulfillment or happiness so much so that I won't really care what the outcome might be. Now even if I don't get the same treatment from you, I won't feel sad because my happiness was no longer dependent on you returning the favor but on me actually carrying out the task.

Selfish me wins!

Where Can You Find Happiness?

There are several places we could go to find happiness, and for many different reasons. They could range from the pretty obvious options to the seemingly bizarre ones. I'll talk about the few I've either noticed or used in my personal life.

Family

Many times, the family is always the first port of call in the pursuit of happiness. It's the set of people we first had contact with, it's the set of people we first get to spend the bulk of our time with. We go through stuff together and have fond memories of these things. They're people who are supposed to care about us far more than anyone else could and so they tend to make us happy. While this is not always the case, owing to various reasons, it's most times the first example of what happiness is and where you can run to when in search of happiness.

Music

For someone who repeatedly falls victim to mood swings, music has done a lot of rescuing my sorry ass. I bet there's a scientific research somewhere as to how and why music is able to perform this magical feat but I still don't understand. I've discovered that not all songs have this power to lighten dark moods and most times the songs that do always have some sort of attachment to the listener. This is somehow tied to the memories we get from activities with the family. So somehow, something that made you happy in the past could still make you happy sometime in the future.

Events

Could be an hobby or a pastime; something you do that brings out the best in you. As mentioned earlier, something that has made you happy in the past could potentially make you happy again. The issue now would be how to carry yourself back to the particular event and relive every moment. This would probably involve a tiny bit of daydreaming or actually attending the event if it's something that happens periodically.

Places

Early on in life when I was just coming to terms with the type of human I am, I found myself enjoying my own company in dark rooms. I always turned off the lights and allowed my imaginations run wild. In that moment, nothing else mattered and whatever might have made me sad prior to that was literally dead. My parents became worried at a point but it helped me a lot.

It's important to have that one place or places you can always go to get a clean slate. It's never okay to just wallow in a sad phase without any rescue in sight.

Friends

This one rarely works for me or let's say it works way slower than the others. And also because making humans your source of happiness is the most unreliable thing you can ever do. The same way family won't always be there for you no matter how hard they try; they're only human unlike your music playlist that'll always be there or that dark room or that memory.

But friends have their functions. They can cheer you up or at least save you from overthinking stuff and taking stupid decisions. If you have friends who really care about you, you're such a lucky child and you shouldn't mess it up!

Conclusion

Nothing is more important than my happiness! It took a while for me to fully grasp this concept and if you're hearing it for the first time, I really don't expect you to totally agree with me right away. You'll get it with time.

Whatever you do, find happiness and hold on to it!

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You should also read:

• Who Else Has It Really Crazy?

• Giving Your All; Is It Even Logical?