One thing that is important to your overall health is fitness. Being physically active for at least 30 hours a day, four days a week, keeps you in shape. Working out increases the strength and durance of your muscles. Something I would like to emphasize as important is your goals when it comes to physical fitness. In today's society, there is a big struggle with women being skinny and men being buff. These types of bodies seem to control the media, causing people to wish for those  bodies. What you need to know is that everybody's body is different. You need to set goals for yourself, not for what you see on everyone else. For example, my goal with physical fitness, is to be able to run faster and longer, as well as increase the strength of my muscles. My goal has never been a weight issue, because that's not what I think is important. The plus side of being active is that there are so many ways to do it! Go for a walk, ride a bike, go dancing, but whatever it is you do, make sure to keep in mind that you are doing yourself a favor. A body in motion tends to stay in motion, and before you know it, your body will have more energy, and you'll be happier. Working out increases endorphins, which make you happy, not to mention how much fun you'll have while doing it, and how happy you'll be when you see results.

Before I continue to share what makes me happy, I would like to address the title of my blog. "What Do You Love? A Blog About Happiness" needs to be broken down into two parts. The second part is quite self explanatory, being that this blog is about happiness. What I wanted to clarify was the first part, "What Do You Love?". This is a question I ask my self as often as I can throughout my day, and I do my best to answer it. Why do I do this? I do this because I am forcing myself to activate the positive force of love. There is a book that I've read recently that changed my life. It's a book called The Power by Rhonda Byrne. In this book, Rhonda discusses the "power" behind the law of attraction. The law of attraction is discussed in her first book The Secret. The main idea behind the law of attraction is that like attracts like. For example: positive thoughts attract positive things, whereas negative thoughts attract negative things. The Power gives advice on how to use the positive force of love to attract positive things into your life. So by thinking of the things I love, I am attracting more love to me. It has been an amazing transformation in my life! I now find myself happier more often. There are so many things to fall in love with every day, you just  have to open your eyes. Once you've found things that you love, hopefully you'll realize that you're happy. So next time you're feeling down, think to yourself, "What do you love?".

I would first like to share how important I believe music is when it comes to happiness. There is an increasing amount of data from studies that proves music to be beneficial to your mood and overall health. Music Therapy is an entire medical field dedicated to treating patients with music. The benefits of listening to music include increased happiness, focus, verbal memory, and creativity, all of which affect the health of the brain and the body. But you don't need to go pay a crazy co-pay at a Music Therapist to make yourself happier, and that's one of the awesome things about music! You can increase your mood just by putting on a happy tune, and the trick is to have it actually be a happy tune, or a tune with some substance. Listen to something that when it comes on, you want to crank up the volume and dance your life away! Listen to something that has that one line that hits your heart strings and plays your soul with the melody. I challenge you to go out and find something that you've never heard before, but something that you like. Far too often, I notice people listening to stuff they don't even like, just because it's on the Top 40 charts. Personally, I listen to all sorts of different genres of music from the 20's on up (I won't list the stuff I listen to, because the list would be way too long). The important thing to me, is that it makes me happy. Music is a great way to let go and to breathe. And if you think about it, it makes sense. We've all seen that cheesy 80's movie montage where people are working hard, but it seems like they're having fun because of the tune that's playing in the background. It's no coincidence that they look like they're happy, it's because they are! Music producers spent time finding the perfect soundtrack for these staged lives, and now you can have that job for your own life. Go out and find something to put a little pep in your step and a smile on your face. I promise you that music could have such a big impact on your life. I know it has made a big one in my life.

This blog is a collection of my observations on happiness. I will be giving advice and providing links to other blogs and resources that I've found to be helpful. I've made this blog because I find peace in helping others feel better in any way I can. The topics will include things such as social relationships, personal conflict, fitness, music, and more. My hope is that someone out there will look to this blog and say that is has been helpful to them through their trials. So if you find this blog to be helpful, I have fulfilled my duty. If not, I will provide links to other places that may be able to help, ones that have certainly helped me.