Summer Tiger
I am a 29 year old single mother who lives in Los Angeles, Ca. with my 2 &1/2 year old daughter, Phoenix. I am a graduate student in a clinical psychology program focusing on Marriage and Family Therapy. I grew up in Miami, Florida, in a divorced family around drugs, alcohol, and chaos, so clearly psychology was my destined field. I am 25% Seminole Indian, and the rest is some mix of Irish, French, Russian, Polish, British and who knows what else. I love yoga, reading, electronic music, and my new addiction is painting. I've moved every year since I was 17, but I'm trying to give it up. I have a weakness for novelty, sex, and chocolate. I've been a dancer, a casino floor manager, a sales assistant, a waitress, and a research assistant. I don't subscribe to any dogma, but I believe in a divine connectedness and in my higher self. I think that covers most of it!What is happiness for you?
For me happiness is about learning and growing through experience, finding the people and things that I love, exploring my passions, and including all of it in my daily life, in the right amount... that part took me a long time to figure out! Thinking of happiness as a process of continued growth and balance, rather than some goal to achieve allows me to appreciate my ups and downs, knowing that if it contributes to my growth, then it adds to my happiness.
Has your profession impacted your level and your vision of happiness? If yes, how?
Yes, completely. I am beginning to understand what self-acceptance means, rather than hiding the parts of me that I felt were unloveable. In embracing my own anger, my insecurities, my darkness, I have felt more connected to the people in my life, I guess because I feel more honest. So now my vision of happiness includes being an authentic person, whereas before I didn't really understand what that meant.
Has your vision of happiness greatly changed through time?
When I was younger it was more about what made me feel good in any given moment. That didn't work out too well! I've sought happiness in relationships, in work, in novelty... in everything outside myself. So the greatest shift for me is the shift from external to internal sources of happiness.
Do you believe you have control on your level of happiness?
That's a tricky one! At this point in my life, and in my personal understanding of happiness I would say yes. I can control my dedication to my growth and awareness, and I can make choices that maximize my happiness. If something awful happened outside of my control I would obviously be unhappy for a length of time, but I could choose how I wanted to move through it and find a way to learn. It's completely subjective though, because some people truly do not have control over their level of happiness, like children, people with severe mental and physical illnesses, etc.
What do you do to change your mood when you’re feeling sad?
I try to allow myself to be sad, and just go into it. Usually if I give myself permission to be sad, and maybe cry, it seems to pass. I've learned that distractions and escapes just end up kicking me in the ass. Also the idea of hiding it from my daughter didn't work too well for me, as if she doesn't read me like a book. If I want her to be able to accept her own emotions, she needs to see me accepting mine.
On the whole, would you say you are a happy person?
Definitely. My life isn't always easy or kind, but it is deeply meaningful and rewarding. That makes me happy.
If you like this post, pass it along. To receive posts as they're being published, you can either send me an e-mail at alina500daystohappiness@hotmail.com or join the facebook group: 500daystohappiness.
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