Daily stress often overrides daily happiness. At the end of the night, it is common for people to remember the bad things that have occurred during the day instead of the good things. In fact, most of our conversations revolve around our stresses and negative experiences in life rather than all of our positive experiences. Personally, when an issue that stresses me out gets resolved, my brain seems to just move onto the next problem. I feel like I’m always stressed out — most of the time over things that don’t even matter that much. When I take a step back and evaluate why I feel this way, I can see that the priority I give to happiness is strongly lacking when compared to stress. Both are created through the accumulation of little things, so why is it that stress occupies such a large portion of our minds? While I haven’t found the answer to this myself, I think that learning how to place importance in the small daily joys rather than the small inconveniences will help form a more positive perspective on life. 

This is definitely an “ easier said than done” situation. Everybody wants to be happy all the time, but unfortunately, life isn’t so convenient as to allow us to live with zero worries. It is actually an incredibly unrealistic goal to eliminate stress completely and only see happy things and think happy thoughts. Where we go wrong in trying to adopt a more positive perspective is setting unreachable goals and becoming hopeless when we can’t accomplish them. Then a cycle begins where we lose motivation and begin accepting that life is just meant to be stressful. Stress is a leading emotion in our lives and all of our happy moments end up being taken for granted. But do you remember how good it feels when you reach into your pocket and find the $20 you forgot about? How about the feeling of excitement when you realize your favorite musician is releasing a surprise single in a couple of days? The moments when you are going about your day and a stranger stops to compliment your style, your accessories, your hair or anything else? The feeling when something good happens to you that isn’t necessarily incredible, but instead something small that brings light to your life. 

Take the time to appreciate the small things, these are the moments that help build our overall happiness. Start to lessen the effect of stress, and instead try placing more importance in small daily events that make you smile. Spend more time focusing on your hobbies, hanging out with family and friends, playing with your pets, going shopping and anything else that makes your day a little more enjoyable. Life is supposed to be fun! While stress is unavoidable, and sometimes necessary, remembering to appreciate the little moments will guide you to balance it out.