**First off, if you haven’t read “Year of Yes” by Shonda Rhimes…Get. That. Book.
While there is a lot of advice in the book, and a lot of life lessons, one that stood out most to me is that “All of our happy endings are not the same.” We watch movies and read stories about how our lives could play out. Love stories and movies depicting “true love.” Shonda says (Once you read the book, you can call her Shonda too) we spend our whole lives kicking the crap out of ourselves for not being this way or that way, not having this thing or that thing, not being like this person or that person. For not living up to the standard that we think applies across the board to all of us.
We’ve been conditioned to believe that happiness happens once you follow a certain list of actions, when in reality, happiness is different for every person. Not every person will find happiness in becoming rich and famous. Not every person will find happiness in the fairytale ending of finding prince charming and living happily ever after. Some of us will lead extraordinary lives and not get married and be extremely happy.
My point is this, there is no one, cookie-cutter way to live in happiness. In the book Shonda says that there is one rule to finding happiness and that rule is: There are no rules. Happiness is about self. It’s about living in a way that you need to and want to. Getting in touch with your inner self and building happiness that radiates outward.
These days’ social media opens the door for us all to constantly compare ourselves to other people. We go on Instagram and see people living what seems to be “the good life” and we begin to compare ourselves. Not everything we see on social networks is reality though. Many times people only broadcast the best parts of their lives. They want to make you believe they are happy. Some of those people may just be happy, and some may just portray their lives that way for acceptance.
At the end of the day we have to do what makes us happy. Lead a life that puts a smile on our own faces. Rewrite the story. Everyone’s fairytale ending is not the same. Some of us will move to farms with no wifi and lead exceedingly happy lives. That won’t be me, but I’m saying, don’t be ashamed of how you define your happiness. Dig deep down inside of yourself, figure out what makes you feel warm inside and own them. Live in them. Think of it this way, we are all snowflakes and no two snowflakes are the same, so why should we try to rewrite our lives and rework our endings like in the movies.