Player Plaza Blog

Happiness is...

What does it mean to you?

Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary defines happiness as a “state of well-being and contentment.” It is amazing to me how a word can be so easily defined but yet contain such elusiveness and obscurity. It is a word that researchers dedicate their professional careers to figure out and better understand. They want answers to the simple questions revolving around what makes people happy. I guarantee that if you were to ask various people in your life what makes them happy, you would get a plethora of answers and perhaps a handful of “I don’t quite know.”

I know for me personally as I look back, happiness has felt like something that I have chased for years, and perhaps as soon as I thought I was on to something, my slippery grasp became weak, and I found myself starting all over again. I remember, as a child, my pursuit of happiness was what gave me hope and reason to get out of bed in the morning. I actually had a piece of paper on my wall that read: “Happiness is…”, and I would write below what happiness was to me. For me, it wasn’t a new bike, or my first car, or a pair of new shoes. But rather, happiness was my best friends. At an early age, I valued closeness, and I found happiness in the few people that knew me and valued me as an individual.

As I look back on my perspective, I notice today that for me, the value of relationships and closeness hasn’t changed. As much as I dream about and aspire for that new Mercedes Benz or that beachfront property, I know in my heart that what really brings me true happiness is the intimacy and connection that I feel for and between the people that I love.
So my question for you is: What really makes you happy and what are you doing to attract that in your life? If your answer is money, my question for you is, “Is it really about the money or what the money represents?”

As elusive happiness can appear to be sometimes, it is important to understand that as you create your own experience through your thoughts, feelings, and actions, you too can create a sense of peace and happiness as you go along. Before you do that, it is necessary for you to figure out and define what happiness means to you. You can’t get there if you don’t know where you are going.

Good luck on your journey, and in the meantime, have some fun and play some games. Game on!