Happiness for Beginners

by Katherine Center

I guess sometimes you just get an idea of a person in your mind, and that’s what you see when you look at him, no matter what.

“You can’t understand this yet, but that’s most of life: breaking your own promises to yourself.”

Certain people in life—and not even always ones who deserve it—can just unlock all your doors, somehow. Even if you change the locks or hide the keys.

“People are always their own favorite topics,” she said. “It’s the only thing they’re experts on.”

“The more you register good things,” she went on, “the more you will think about and remember good things. And since all you really have left of the past is what you remember—” “It changes the story of your life.”

said. “The things you think about determine the things you think about”—meaning the more you focus on something, the more likely your brain is to focus on it.

“Having doesn’t make you happy: appreciating does.” Maybe not having what I wanted would force me to appreciate what I did have. It was possible, at least. All I could do was try. Even just trying, I decided, could be an act of bravery in itself.

I had finally come to understand that not getting what you want is actually the trick to it all. Because not getting what you want forces you to appreciate what you already have.

I finally got that if you were always in a state of longing you could never truly get satisfied,

Good things are so easy to overlook, but that doesn’t make them any less there.