I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I didn’t work so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Good read. In general I think articles like this can come off as very obvious or “duh” information, but sometimes I think it’s good to step outside of ourselves and remind us of what’s important, what we should value, what we should aspire for in our futures.

This part rang particularly true for me:

Many [do] not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They [stay] stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.

People deserve to be happy, they deserve to do the things that they love. Because I’ve been journaling since I was 10 (and blogging since I was 14), I tend to share a lot of myself unfiltered, and I often worry that I live my life too impulsively, too honestly. However, when I look back at the things that I’ve seen/said/done, I have very little regrets, because I’ve always aggressively pursued my own happiness and have been fortunate enough to experience love, true friendship…and some other weird shit that will be interesting to relay to my future children once they turn 18 and get into college.

I think it’s important to be cognizant of your own happiness and of the things that make you happy, because if you’re not doing what makes you happy, what are you doing?