Happy is what we are all striving for, right? Whether that means money, family, less stress, getting to travel the world, helping people, having your own homestead, growing your own food, maybe just a little peace and quiet. Whatever it is, we are all aiming for a higher level of happiness, and here are 10 goals for a happier life.
This blog is going to be a little different. As some of you know, this blog is still new to me. While I have had Cottage Full of Love for more than a year now, I have slacked on putting content out. For 2024, I have decided enough is enough, and I am dedicated to writing two blog posts a week. One recipe and one of anything else.
Recipes are easy. I love to cook and am learning to love food photography. It’s the “Anything else” that is killing me. Trying to blog with the intent of eventually making a business from it is hard. I think most of us struggle with feeling passion-less. While I love cooking I love NOT cooking some days. While I love home decor, I DON’T fill my house Pinterest-perfect every season. While I LOVE the IDEA of gardening and growing my own food, I really don’t want to spend all my energy in a garden.
The struggle is real. The internet tells us to “Pick 2-4 things you write about in your lifestyle blog,” and that’s the way around picking only one. Still struggling. I spent all day yesterday sulking because I can’t seem to write. I spent all night last night lying awake in bed, thinking about how I’ll never be able to call myself a blogger because I can’t decide what to write about. I guess you could call it writers-block.
I want to talk about the goals that I, and many others, should have to reach a happier life. Some of these may be a little controversial, but they should all be considered because everyone has different goals for a happier life.
Table of Contents
1. Money
This is probably on everyone’s list of goals for a happier life. I know it’s on mine. It’s been my motivation to start this blog, which has only proved to be harder than I had expected.
Work: We should all be working in a job we can stand. I know that is hard for many, but if you are stuck in a job you hate…do some training for something else! Education can be expensive, but the internet is FILLED with articles about jobs you can do without schooling.
Additionally, check to see if your work offers any kind of discounts for school. I am fortunate enough to be getting my bachelor’s degree 100% covered by my work. The rules for that are ‘I need to get good grades and stay employed with my employer for 1 year after I graduate’. That’s a pretty great deal if you ask me. I still have student loans from when I was 17 y/o, and Carrington College took advantage of a minor and signed me up for some impossible loans. Also, don’t let your degree go to waste! I know too many people who have degrees they aren’t using!
Decade goals: I always set money-decade goals for myself. My last one was “Working from home by the time I’m 30.” while this isn’t specifically a price, it was a work goal to get me somewhere. I wanted to work from home so I could find time to work on a side hustle. My next goal is ‘To make $100,000 a year before I turn 40’. While this goal is broad and vague it keeps this amount in my head every time I have a birthday or try to invest in something.
Side Hustle: If I’m being honest, I hate the word hustle, haha, but it is what it is. Back in 2017, when James (husband) and I were house shopping, our realtor told us that he had heard, “You should never have all your eggs in 1 basket, financially.” While I have heard this many times since then, this was the most impactful, and I still think about it. I think this is true. If Covid 2020 taught us anything, it should have taught us that everything can crash at any moment. I will be writing an article soon about how it has been trying to figure out blogging so, please subscribe if you’re interested!
There are so many ways to add to your income, but I choose blogging because I want to build something, and I would recommend this. While people recommend doing stuff like Uber or getting a side job, I think that is a mistake because then you are just selling your time again. I have a friend who wants to write children’s books and this is a great goal because she can build herself into a brand and profit from that later. The goal of a side hustle should be passive income eventually.
Even though money definitely isn’t everything in life, I believe it is important to keep it as part of our goals for a happier life.
2. Family
We all know how important family is and I think for most families this is becoming a harder subject. The family unit has been defiled by “the world” and all the awful things that have been going on in it. Big families used to be common, and now only children, separated parents, and childless couples are very common.
My husband and I aren’t having children and it leads to much quieter holidays. Out of my family and my husband’s family, there are 7 members in our generations, and out of those 7 kids, only 2 had children. It is important to be close to what family is around. Maybe your family looks very different, but we struggle to get people together for holidays and spend quality time together.
Goals for a happier life are being close to family, and probably the most important.
3. Stress Less
Easier said than done, huh?? We need to focus on things in our world that can naturally help us! Earthing or grounding is so important in today’s world, where we spend all of our time disconnected from the natural world. Something I have been a huge advocate of lately is sunlight. After doing some real research on what the sunlight does for us as humans me wanting to soak up the sunlight EVERY SINGLE DAY. It is so important for goals for a happier life.
Letting the sunlight into your pupil causes your body to produce serotonin which is INCREDIBLE! It helps with stress, sleep, depression, weightloss, and so much more! Read more about that here.
4. Find Contentment
This is something I am watching a lot of people similar to my age (31) suffering from not being able to do. In this world where we can spend all day watching people online living amazing lives it makes it hard for us normal people to be ok that we aren’t living some extravagant lifestyle. It makes marriages suffer, and creates depression and severe FOMO.
Dream big but appreciate today.
Unknown
On my mission to find contentment, I do my best to take at least 2 days a week where I put away social media.
This is hard. I’m not really a social media addict, but I am addicted to checking on this blog. I check constantly to see how my numbers are doing for the day. Putting that away for a day, along with Instagram, Pinterest, and everything else, lets me just remember that it doesn’t really exist. It reminds me that my life is beautiful with my husband, my dog, and my kitties. I get cleaning done, gives me a chance to maybe put some music on and do something other than staring at my phone. Finding contentment is a huge part of goals for a happier life.
5. A Beautifully Maintained Home
Is anyone ready to laugh at this one?? HA! I thought…when I got my job working from home, I would keep my house spik-and-span, work, pay attention to my animals and husband, write a blog, and go to college. Wow, was I wrong! My house is still a struggle, not to mention it’s not a pretty home which is hard to stay motivated to keep it clean. I have worked hard to create a schedule of cleaning to keep up with the house. I will be releasing that in an article soon, don’t forget to subscribe for that =P!
This goal is also going to require money, I know many people these days are struggling financially to get into a place where they can buy their own home, and this could just be a pipe dream for many, but I have to say, don’t give up! I am thankful to be in a house where we are paying our mortgage, but that comes with many other issues.
Check out my article about buying a house on acreage, it goes into more depth about that situation! Buying a House with Acreage?? Consider these things first.
Having a maintained home, if it is not beautiful, should be part of our goals for a happier life.
6. Producing Own Food Supply
Many people, if not all, have some piece of a dream to be more independent from grocery stores and “the world.” The idea of a homestead has been an increasing dream for many millions of people across the United States and many other countries. We have learned so much over the last few decades about the benefits of growing your own food supply, from freshness, preservative-free food to concern of not being able to get food from the stores and having the importance of knowledge of how to grow your food.
Gardening is hard, a labor of love, and can even be expensive at first but being slightly more self-sufficient, not to mention spending time outside in nature, with the pollinators, sun, birds, and critters, can help us ground and is a great addition to the goals for a happier life.
7. Travel
I had a friend who taught me so much about life, and one of the things she truly engrained in my head is “Traveling changes a person for the better.” This was something I really took to heart, and when I traveled to Hawaii in 2022, I really understood what she meant. She was talking about other countries, seeing how others lived and how the rest of the world functions but Kauai was an experience I will never forget, and it really did help me grow. We stayed in an Airbnb, and for about 4 days of our trip, I really got to live in a local community with locals. It was truly amazing.
As a born and raised California girl, I think travel is extremely important to our mental health. Experiences are essential to feeling fulfilled for me, and I don’t think I am unique in that way. This will always be in my goals for a happier life and I hope I can do more traveling in the future.
8. Helping Other Humans
This is something I am still working on myself. I have worked in health care since I was 20; the 10 years I spent working in a pharmacy were some of the most rewarding years of my life. I was able to actually help people directly. While I struggled to find joy in that job after about 8 years, up until about then, I learned so much about people and how I could help people with their pharmacy needs. Many people don’t stop to learn and appreciate this.
We all know what it is like to walk into places with professionals who just hate their jobs. I understand being burnt out, but knowing I had the opportunity to make people’s day and provide them with the help they needed kept a smile on my face while some coworkers just counted down the minutes til they left.
Not only being able to help people in our lives, whatever that may look like for you, but taking time to appreciate that you are that light for people. Even if that is just a small flashlight on a dark day, it is important for our internal happiness. Whether you work in customer service, on the phone, in health care, technology, with the general public, or even with internal people of your company, just remember, you have a chance to make people’s day better.
Of course, we can take this a step further and say helping people by donating money, time, volunteering, or reaching out to people in need can also provide so much fulfillment and happiness. I worked with a Pharmacist who used to make a big batch of soup or sandwiches and take it around every Saturday morning and feed homeless people on the street. It was something that brought her great joy! Goals for a happier life mean helping others be happy.
9. God
This will be controversial for many people, but this is very important to me and helps me live a happier life 100%. Growing up, I knew nothing of religion of any kind. Meeting my husband and becoming so involved with his family have taught me to be a Christian and what it all means. Do I go to church on Sunday? Shamefully no. But it doesn’t, for a second, mean I don’t have my faith. Having a relationship with Jesus, knowing he is looking out for me and that my life is his makes me a much happier person and is part of my goals for a happier life.
This has been a huge part of my optimisim over the last 10 years of my life or so. The world is only getting scarier, and it’s nice to know that whatever happens, I am loved and being taken care of. Additionally, I think being part of a church or bible study is a great place to meet like-minded individuals and socialize with many good people.
10. Laughter
This may sound like a cheap shot to fill in the blank so I can make it to 10, but it’s not. Laughter is SO important for goals for a happier life, and as we get older, we laugh so much less.
Something I am finding in my 30s is how much life becomes serious. This optimistic, carefree person I used to be is starting to slip away. Not that my life is bad in any way or that I don’t find joy in life, but you learn so much as you grow. People around you get older, there’s always money to think about, children are a huge stressor, pets you love pass away, and things just happen as you grow. We gain wisdom, sympathy, thoughtfulness, and maturity, but we lose that free spirit inside of us.
We need to remember to keep friends who make us laugh, turn off the news and watch funny videos, and get out of the house for experiences that make us smile and bring us joy. We all know “laughter is the best medicine.”
Conclusion
That’s it! That’s my list of Goals for a Happier Life! These are things I am implementing every day in my life to keep a smile on my face and move forward with my head held high every day. I set goals every New Year for myself and for my marriage in addition to my decade goals and my daily goals (otherwise known as just my daily to-do list haha). I hope you got something out of this post or maybe we just hung out while you read through this article, which I appreciate just as much!
Thank you so much for reading! Check out some of these other articles!
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