Little Habits that Steal Your Happiness

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness and peace of mind. Don’t let things steal your happiness.

Yesterday afternoon I met a friend at a local coffee shop. She brought her laptop along so she could show me some of her latest digital art designs. As we chatted and scrolled through her artwork, the laptop suddenly started making an unhealthy buzzing noise, then the screen flickered on and off and then cut off completely. And as we both stared at one another in disbelief, the funky aroma of fried computer circuits filled our nostrils.

I quickly grabbed the laptop off the counter to inspect it and the problem instantly revealed itself. The bottom of the laptop was soaking wet and an empty, spilled water cup rested against the side of her purse just behind where the laptop was sitting. In the midst of us chatting and shifting the laptop’s 15-inch screen back and forth, we somehow spilled a cup of water the barista had inadvertently placed on the counter behind the screen, which was out of our view.

When life throws us nasty curveballs like this, it typically doesn’t make any sense to us, and our natural emotional reaction might be to get extremely upset and scream obscenities at the top of our lungs. But how does this help our dilemma? Obviously, it doesn’t.

My friend threw her hands up in the air and, to my surprise, cracked a half-smile and said, “That’s exactly why I backed up my files this morning, and why I have insurance on my laptop!”