To be honest with all of you, I have a lot of fear to begin 2019. While everyone is excited and said, “Bring It On, 2019!”. Deep down, my worries pile up and bury my excitement. I am someone who hates uncertainties, and this always happens to me every end of the year. I don’t know what’s going to happen this year – it’s a new chapter, it’s a new blank page. Sometimes I am just too scared to be excited. Then I realized, focusing on the goals I want to achieve in 2019 is excellent. But am I only going to feel happy if I reach all my checklists? What if I don’t accomplish some of them? I began to re-evaluate myself.

Focusing on things that make us happy is great, but it can also be dangerous. If we keep putting our happiness on things, goals, hobbies or people, we will never find true happiness. Sometimes I’m relying my happiness on clear skin. If I have bad skin days, I started to feel anxious, insecure, angry and frustrated. But I can’t let that happen every time things don’t go my way. I want to feel joyful in every situation, not only when I get what I want.

Are you guilty of spending hours on your Instagram feed, comparing your lives to people you never met across the world?  I am. I noticed if I spend many hours looking at other people’s lives, I started to become very ungrateful and full of complaints. I’m not saying we should turn off social media, but we could change who we pay attention to. You can start unfollowing the people that don’t add value to your life. Replace them by following more useful content so your feed will be full of cool, exciting things you could learn from.

I begin to understand the difference between happiness and feeling blessed. Happiness comes from what happens to you. On the other hand, if you say you are blessed, you feel grateful to have something: health, love, talent, etc. Sometimes chasing our goals make us less grateful because we focus on the things that we don’t have yet. Instead of only focusing on what I want to get, I want to be more grateful for all the things I’m blessed with.