Choices: Influences

Happy St David's Day! (Confession: I thought that February had 29 days this year as opposed to only 28, so I scheduled today's post as being the final Wednesday of Feb's series... Sorry!!! However, [spoiler alert] March's series, which'll start next Wednesday, is called Meet The United Kingdom (Plus Ireland). Each week I'll do a profile of one country in the UK+Ireland, as it's both St David's Day (Wales) and St Patrick's Day (Ireland) this month.)

Anyways, ignoring my poor counting/planning, on with February's final post! Today's is all about choosing influences in your life.



Rachel's Challenge (which I've mentioned a few times before) is a set of five personal 'challenges' for you to undertake. My favourite of these is number three: Choose Positive Influences. In our lives, we are influenced by an endless list of things; news, friends, the internet, social conventions, etc to name just a few. We don't choose whether or not we see some of these things in our lives, but we can choose how they affect us.

I personally think that taking time to reflect on your life and the things that make it up is essential. We need to analyse what's going on in your lives so that we can keep the good stuff, and better/remove the bad. One big aspect of this which can be very difficult is friendships. Some friendships are harmful and toxic, and may be changing you for the worse or withholding you from being the best you can be. It's a cliché, I know, but there's a reason for that - it's true. If you have someone in your life who you don't wanting your life, then remove yourself from them. If they're holding you back or changing you into something you don't want to be, then your'e under no obligation to keep spending time with them.

My personal influences that I choose everyday are Rachel herself, my best friends, and God. I take inspiration and instruction from the people who I keep myself around, and sources that I trust and have been proven to be what I want them to be. These choices help to form my ethics and moral code, as well as guide me in dictating how I live every single day. They've helped me more than I can express, and I've changed so much as a person over the past few months that I'm hard recognisable - and I couldn't be happier. Imagine yourself trading places with your current idol - whether that be a celebrity, a friend, or an image you have of yourself. Are you happy? Happier than you are now? Happier than you would be without those influences? Are you making other people happy? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you may want to rethink your idols.

My challenge to you is to consider your personal influences, and if you feel you should, then change them. Remove yourself from the lives of people who put you down. Reach out to people you want to help, or can help you. Stop doing that one thing you hate about yourself. Start doing something productive, something constructive, something good. And be proud of yourself.

Counting My Blessings

I wrote this when I was extremely happy, and it's message is something I need to remind myself of. You should remember it too.

I started counting good things in my life
And I started to count my worries and strife
The good things took longer; hours on end
Whilst the bad things took seconds, it was hard to comprehend
Because in school I was good at maths; I didn't even try
But now I guessI've realised I still can't count that high,
All my virtues and amenities added up rather quickly,
And the volume of the bad things stacked up not nearly so thickly.
So now I'm sure that life is so much more than good to me
And life is good in general; count your blessings and you'll see.

                                        -c.h.f

A Desperate Hue

A toddler stubbornly refusing to go to bed
Is the setting sun a-flaming; into the blue sky orange bled.
Then when again said sun glimpses Earth in early morning,
It's colours start to pierce your eyes to give you a forewarning
Of the magic and glory the day will bring, if only you will try
To be the oranges, yellows, and reds in life's cold, white, and blue sky.

                                        -c.h.f

I Am... Happy

Happiness.
What does that word mean to you?
Is it a person? A place? One prevalent moment of laughter?
For me, happiness isn't a memory, nor is it a goal to aim for. It's a way of life, a mindset, a means of living. Happiness is not a job or a destination, it shouldn't be something that's on your bucket list. You should be doing the things on your bucket list whilst being happy.

For a while now, I've been debating what makes me happy. Here's what I came up with (in no particular order):

• seeing a sunrise
• 3am deep chats with close friends
• Bo Burnham
• the nostalgia of my memory box
• Skins
• when you wake up and think it's time to get up but really it's 2am and you have 4 more hours to sleep
• the feel of a hot water bottle thawing your body on a cold day
• Rachel Joy Scott
• Bee Movie memes
• being vegan
• Zero Day
• hugs
• baking
• complex characters
• Twenty One Pilot's cover of Cancer by My Chemical Romance
• that vine where a lil Spanish girl is laughing then her chewing gum falls out and she mutters 'oh, mi chicle' oh boy that gets me every time
• how my family almost literally used to be the family from Outnumbered
• Harry Potter (!!!)
• sleeping on friends on the bus to/from college
• Barack Obama singing
• my GCSE Music class (hi Mr Lawrenson I miss you)
• people who have a wide vocabulary and utilise it in daily life
• 13 Reasons Why
• Don't Threaten Me With A Good Time by Panic! At The Disco
• avocados
• when it's a stranger's birthday at college and everyone in the canteen claps
• meditation
• people pointing out your little idiosyncrasies
• The Death Cure
• finding cheap vinyl
• online shopping
• putting up the Christmas tree
• group chats
• The Jonas Brothers (I know, I'm embarrassed)
• spending time with God
• when you're told nice things that people have said behind your back (I call it kind bitching)
• NoContextLouis on twitter oh boy
• Louis Theroux in general tbf
• passive-aggressive vegan memes
• reading other people's poetry/novels/writings
• Emma Watson
• films which make exceptional use of colour
• singing
• seeing strangers show unprovoked compassion
• my faith
• PositivePlant on twitter
• that Michael McIntyre sketch about different name spellings
• when you've finished watching a live show and the cast are bowing and for no reason you suddenly flood with tears (no?? just me?? oh...)
• when the whole family's down and you're annoyed at the noise then you realise how lucky you are despite it
• Joe Walker as Umbridge
• hearing a cat purr
• seeing someone you love smile
• when you reread a poem you wrote a while ago and still? like it???
• Stellar Kart
• hearing one of your common phrases slip into a friend's vocabulary
• someone's face lighting up when talking about their passion

And so much more. These are a few of the things that bring happiness to my life, and I didn't even mention the largest contributors; my friends and their undying banter, my close family and our improbable harmony, simple life itself.

As this is the final Wednesday (and the final day!) of November, this is the final post of I Am..., so if you have any requests or suggestions for what the Wednesday series should be for December, let me know! 

Also, let me know what makes you happy, and what happiness means to you.

Thank you for reading.