The Road to Happiness

Hey y'all, Randa here.  I am so excited to bring on another beautiful face of Southern Jewlz and share with you her thoughts and road to happiness.  Bre is an incredibly gorgeous soul inside and out.  I hope you enjoy getting to learn more about her, just like i have!  Here's her blog:

Last year, my junior year in college, was one of the most difficult years I have ever experienced. For many reasons I had an overburdening amount of stress with school, friends, and family. I remember specifically waking up one gloomy Friday in tears calling my Mom afraid and lost. As I sat in my room, I thought to myself: “I have lost who I am, I have lost who I want to be, I have lost my relationship with God, I am unhappy and I have to do something about it.”  It was through this realization that I knew a couple of things had to change. First of all, I needed to let some people go. Then I needed to rediscover God and fully pursue His heart. Lastly, I needed to remember my true self. Now these words were easy for me to come up with in my mind, but actually acting on them would be the more difficult part. I, however, just decided to start and not stop until I was happy again… I called it my road to happiness.

LET PEOPLE GO- This was the first step to my road to happiness. Now, this is hard to do. If you are like me, then you have so many relationships. Even when I get into arguments or distance myself from people, it takes a lot for me to actually let someone go…. and I usually can’t!  I nonetheless knew that if I let some people go in my life that it would help me on my journey towards God’s heart and my overall happiness. I started off by asking myself some important questions, which I think are essential if you are on the fence about letting someone go out of your life. These three questions ended up helping me a lot more and now guide my future decisions bringing me more clarity. 

1.  If they want to go, let them go.

-  I often find that a lot of times I will hold on to relationships with people and not even realize obvious signs of them trying to get out of a relationship with me. Now, some signs aren’t obvious but a relationship is between two people. So if you are the only one trying and pursuing them while they are giving you nothing in return, then that’s a problem. Now, in no way am I saying it’s a competition or tally of exchange, like you give me this I give you this. But it is a two way street; I pursue a relationship with you, you pursue a relationship with me. If only one person is trying, it’s not much of a relationship. So, if that person is constantly showing you obvious signs of not wanting to hangout, not answering you or pursuing you then maybe you should consider letting them go out of your life. Someone who wants to be in your life will make the time and effort to be in your life, I promise!

2.  If you have done everything you can and they don’t want to stay…let them go.

- This is an easy one for me to understand and weed out. If you consistently ask for someone’s time, love, affection, and have done everything in your power to be closer to them and they still refuse or ignore you, then let them go. To me, when you have done everything you can do there is nothing else for you to do. You can’t feel bad for walking away when you have given your all to be with someone that doesn’t appreciate your time or efforts. 

3. Whatever they are running after, they will see what they are missing out in the end. 

- This causes me to ask a lot of questions: “Why do they not want to be with me?” “Why won’t they give me time?” And when I ask these questions, they usually leave me looking towards myself and blaming parts of me. This feeling leads me to start questioning myself: “Well, am I not pretty enough?” “Am I not funny enough?” “Am I not smart enough?” “Am I not worthy enough?” If you ask these questions constantly... STOP. You are, and always will be enough. Sometimes it’s hard for us to understand why people do what they do. Some people aren’t meant to stay in your life forever. Sometimes people and relationships are temporary and are just lessons learned. It isn’t good for us to dwell on “what ifs and why not’s” because all this leads to is doubt, usually regret, and low self-esteem.  Whatever they are looking for let them look. It is their loss in the end that they wont get to be apart of your life and you need to not take their actions too personally.

LOVE YOURSELF- This is the second step in my road to happiness. This concept is probably one of the hardest things to do or accomplish in life, or at least for me it is. I feel like loving yourself is a constant battle. Sometimes you feel incredible and confident. Other times you hate everything about yourself and have no self worth what so ever. It’s hard to be happy with yourself and love yourself unfailingly. Growing up, this battle was prominent in my life. I think at a young age girls in general have so much pressure focused on them: be pretty, be skinny, be the coolest, have the coolest clothes, be the most popular and so forth. However, I think that loving yourself, knowing who you are, and finding who you are go hand in hand. I think that if you don’t know who you are and who you want to be then it makes it nearly impossible to love yourself. I decided at the beginning of that dark time last year to make three lists: who I was, who I am, and who I want to be. My list of who I was had things that included: I was a girl, I was afraid, I was broken, I was unworthy, I was ashamed, and I was lost. After that list, I made another list of things that I am. Simple things were added which contained: I am a woman, a Christian, a runner, a cook, a student, a daughter. Over time I added and expanded to this list every day: I am beautiful, I am smart, I am strong, and I am independent. After a while, it was easy to add on to this list and in the end, I had pages of things I was. Finally, I made a list of who I wanted to be which encompassed: A mother, a leader, a counselor, a true friend, a rock, an example of God’s child. When I think about who I want to be, I realize that I might never achieve that specific person, but that isn’t discouraging to me, it’s rewarding. I may never be the person I want to be, but I know who I am, who I was and the journey I am making to try to be that person. I am constantly trying to better myself to be that person and to me that’s awesome and rewarding in itself!  I am still adding to these lists everyday. I keep all of these pages easy to access because it is important to understand and remember who you were, who you are, and who you want to be. I would highly suggest writing these lists to help you love yourself more!

LEARN TO BE ALONE AND HAPPY BY YOURSELF (include God) - This was the last step in my road happiness. Learning to be happy and be alone, at least for a little bit. I think it is important to be alone at some point in your life. Have you ever had a friend that constantly needed attention from others or wanted a relationship every second of every day? I have, and I think at a point in my life I can’t say I wasn’t that person. However, I think that in order to discover yourself and work on yourself you need time to be alone. This process of being alone can help you look inwards in a non-selfish way and help you learn more about what you want. A pastor told me once when you love God above all, you will never be alone or disappointed. “What does that mean?” I wondered after He said this. Well, if you think about it, a lot of times the relationships we get caught up in with people become the only relationships we have. We are blinded by this relationship and that person becomes our only form of happiness. This is flawed in every way in my opinion. If someone else is your only happiness in life and some thing happens to that person, what will you do? You can’t just cease to exist or live. Does that make sense? Now, if God is your happiness and your relationship, if the relationship with a person fails, guess who you have to fall back on… Him. I had to rediscover God last year because I felt like I got to the point in my faith where I was just going through the motions. But faith without works is dead. I wanted to pursue His heart fully and be overwhelmed by Him. How I wanted to feel with Him reminds me of a song by Bethel called “In Over My Head”. This song helped me every day for a long time and every time I hear it, it reminds me of that hard time I once had and how far I have come now.  In the song it talks about coming to a place in your life where you aren’t satisfied and all you long for is Him and his glory.  It then describes life like a person standing on the shore. You are sometimes knee deep in the water and are afraid because you are scared and uncomfortable, it’s a place you’ve never been and you are in many ways vulnerable.  As you slowly go towards the waves, hesitant and scared, unsteady and broken you are traveling closer. Then the song says one of the most powerful things I have heard: “and further and further my heart moves away from the shore whatever it looks like, whatever may come I am yours…… and then You crash over me and I’ve lost control but I’m free I’m going under, I’m in over my head… then you crash over me, and that’s where You want me to be I’m going under, I’m in over my head. Whether I sink , whether I swim it makes no difference when I’m beautifully in over my head”.  Whenever we pursue God’s heart, we feel this overwhelming, over powering possession of us and it encompasses our whole being filling us with everything we could ever imagine and more. 

FINAL TIPS ON LIVING A HAPPY LIFE- Some final thoughts that I want people to know is that making these decisions gets easier and easier, I promise. There will always be times where we fail and don’t succeed but guess what? God blesses us with a new sunrise every morning. It is at that time where we can wake up from the darkness of the night before and decide in that moment that we open our eyes who we want to be that day, what we want to do, and that is beautiful to me. Think of every day as the first day of your life. Live everyday to the fullest. Let people go. Let people in. Don’t chase people. Attract them. Work hard and be yourself. Love God. Love others. Love yourself. 

I thank God, Randa, and Southern Jewlz for this opportunity and the countless blessings, 

Bre Skrhak