Give Yourself Permission to Be Happy (Even When Life is a Mess) | #134

What does it mean to give yourself permission to be happy? In this Daily Dose, Dawn Super explores why so many people default to unhappiness when life feels hard—and how learning to separate circumstances from inner experience can help you build resilience, emotional balance, and everyday joy.

Watch the Video Here or Read the Script below

What does it mean to give yourself permission to be happy?

This video is for anyone who feels unhappy often, by default, or at every little inconvenience that you meet.

This is the Daily Dose of Dawn at Dawn, videos designed to expand your thinking.

So, why do we want to learn this? Because it's easy to think you don't have the right to be happy because life is hard, because you have challenges, because the world seems to be a big fat mess.

Welcome back to my happy matters collective. If you're new here, thanks for joining us.

So, how did this come into my awareness? Well, I'm a resilience coach now, but for 41 years, I let my facts dictate my feelings. I felt I didn't have a right to be happy because of my lifelong health issues and relationship and financial issues.

But that's a lie I told myself.

If I had always been living happy matters, I might have avoided some of the things that made me so unhappy in the first place. Because like I mentioned yesterday, if we're bonding through drama, then that's going to filter out into our lives. Same as if we're bonding through joy.

So when you're going through hard stuff and you experience something that makes you happy, it's having the presence of mind to let it be okay to be happy about it.

And oddly enough, it takes practice.

It helps me to separate myself from whatever it is that I'm experiencing, to compartmentalize the outside world from the inside of my head.

It's letting your mind be a playground when you're not dealing with the hard stuff in the moment.

This isn't escapism. It's respite.

You're not ignoring the hard stuff. You're just not letting it take center stage all the time.

It's okay to take breaks so you don't lose your mind.

When you're living with really hard stuff, a movie, a comedy that you can get lost in, is a nice little respite.

It took me 41 years to realize I had to give myself permission to be happy because my life was so hard. If you can relate to that, dive into my book: https://HowToBeOnYourOwnSide.com and over 14 days you will learn how to support yourself through this thing called life!

Do you have a hard time remembering that you can choose happy? Get my free Happy Matters magnet and let it sit on your fridge, encouraging you. Sign up at dailydoseofdawn.com and I'll mail you one (yes, really free, I make them myself and they really help!) 💛