It’s been over 3 years since the Covid pandemic started really affecting all our lives. During that first year, the directives were to isolate, distance ourselves, avoid touching anyone, and wear masks. People who were used to being around other people regularly were now spending a lot of time home, either alone or with the same small group of family members, day after day. As humans, we need connection as part of our basic needs, and many people became very disconnected during the pandemic time period. We also need purpose, and for a lot of people no longer going to work, volunteer activities, social activities, church, etc. meant they lost their sense of purpose. In an overall way, collectively we lost a large and significant element of all the things that made us happier, healthier people.

Not everyone started out happy, though, and so they went from being either at an average-to-mediocre level of happiness, or an unhappy state, to being even more unhappy. To bounce back then takes a whole lot more time, effort, and contribution to the path toward happiness. How have you been feeling the past couple years, and how happy would you consider yourself to be these days?

Being happy is largely a choice. Yes, our circumstances and experiences affect us, but how we recover from those or respond afterward is very much dependent on how we choose to go forward. Life is like relationships – we can focus on all the negatives, and let our experiences drag us down, or we can focus on the positives, making a purposeful and intentional effort to include more good things.

I’ve been working over the past six months on a new project called the Strategic Happiness Plan, because in my work I have seen the negative effects the last few years has had on many people. Businesses regularly do strategic planning to align their goals with their company mission, and to continue growing and adapting and moving forward successfully. Years ago, I started doing my own personal strategic planning over the New Year’s holiday, instead of making resolutions. I would look at my successes and challenges from the previous year, set new goals, create small milestones to help reach each goal, and I would implement the plan to make the improvements and changes in my life that I decided I needed.

The Strategic Happiness Plan is a personal strategy, with education about mental health, obstacles to happiness, contributors to happiness, and it helps you get to know yourself, acknowledge what needs to change, and develop a plan to work toward happiness. Over the course of a year, in 52 weekly online sessions, participants work on their own happiness, gaining the tools to improve their life. I’ll be writing about each week’s session in this weekly column, so if you want to get happy… stay tuned.

This week, ask yourself the question of, “What is Happiness to you?” It’s going to be different for different people, so don’t let other people influence your own ideas. Is happiness, to you, a sense of peace? Is it the absence of worry or stress? Is it having a good friend who accepts you, no matter what? Define what happiness is, to you, because you can’t start setting goals to find happiness if you don’t first know what that means to you. Take some time, write about it, think about it, and decide for yourself what you want when it comes to living a life of happiness.