As someone who is endlessly fascinated by human behavior and the power of mastering your inner game, I enjoy social media for how it serves up plenty of material to study. A friend of mine told me that only old people use Facebook. Maybe one day I’ll grow younger by only using Instagram, but until that day, I’ll embrace my Gen X self and use both platforms.

Many advocates of mental health are quick to demonize social media, but I view social media as I view life: It is what you make it. I know enough about Instagram to make my feed exactly how I want it: I follow people who uplift others and share strategies, books, quotes and resources on overcoming and being a cycle breaker. This is the content I want to study and be inspired by, so I feed the algorithm what I want.

If you were to hop on my Instagram page and scroll, you’d find positivity, empathy, resilience, a fighting spirit and lots of light and love from the people I follow, because I believe the content we digest and the people we surround ourselves with matters. In fact, going to my Instagram page (which is easier to customize to your preferences than Facebook) gives me instant joy as I read short bits of truth and inspiration that resonate with me. It’s a small thing about my day that I enjoy, similar to the happiness I feel listening to an empowering podcast as I make lunch or walk our dogs.

Life is curated by us. 

Our happiness and fulfillment in life are largely influenced by our perspective and the filter in which we see the world. I have a longtime friend who sees the world and life as something to get through or endure. He thinks the world is against him, and many of his social media posts reflect this injustice. He loves music, but doesn’t love that he hasn’t been able to make music work as a career. How he sees the world is what he keeps seeing. He doesn’t realize that he is stuck. I don’t notice him asking himself questions like: How am I getting in my own way? Or: How can I start taking steps to shift from where I currently am to where I want to be? Instead, every post bemoans something.

Self-awareness is the most underrated path to happiness. Nonfiction books about personal growth and talk therapy might not be your top ways to spend your time, but knowing yourself and unpacking how you were heavily influenced by your upbringing can be life-changing. You have to take a hard look at what is truly you versus what was imparted to you when you were too young to choose for yourself.

Growth involves undoing. You can enter therapy feeling like your head is a tangled web of confusion and leave with clarity and understandings that propel you forward. You can access a clarity that feels like strength. With self-awareness, you build a neural pathway to hear your own voice, know who you are and get clear on what you want in life. Those are some big building blocks to a happy life.

Sleep is nature’s magic potion. I used to be a “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” person. I love being full of energy and a productivity junkie. (Recently I read that productivity doesn’t define your self-worth. Maybe I’ll tackle that concept someday.) Getting seven to eight hours of sleep helps across the board, from your health to your mental clarity and your outlook. People brush off sleep as one of those things you have to do, when sleep is actually priceless. Rest opens up possibility thinking. If you’re having a disastrous day, the best thing you could do is sleep on it and see how you feel the next day. Aim to give yourself the time to sleep well and watch how it shifts things for you.

Exercise is nature’s happiness prescription. There are so many cool ways to move and it’s the single best thing you can do for your overall health. Curate exactly what you want. Group of friends hitting the trail? Solo time on your bike? Dynamic duo going for a jog? Couple time power walking? Indoor fitness with the energy of a community? All of the above? Write your own script for the exercise you love and the endorphins will follow.

Relationships are everything. The one you have with yourself is most important. Investing in your relationships with family and friends is imperative for your happiness, but mastering your inner game (your relationship with yourself) determines your outer game. There’s a saying that “geography changes nothing,” meaning, wherever you go, there you are. I’ve watched this lesson play out on repeat in me and in others. We can only choose the thoughts we think, what we choose to believe and the actions we take. We cannot control what others do and think.

Shatter any external mirrors. If we connect our well-being to the external (a person, a politician, an event, a day), we are guaranteed to go downhill. Why would we tether our mental health to something outside of ourselves? We have the ability to create the software that runs our lives. If we stay grounded in who we are, love the decisions we make and fully embrace the experience of being alive (triumphs, hardships and sorrows included) we get to decide our inner game. We can fight for what’s important to us and know there is tremendous freedom in mastering ourselves.

Rather than practicing gratitude, live it. In order to love life and love being alive, I think it’s important to keep this little secret tucked in your pocket: Life can be a little ridiculous. Having a sense of humor, even dark humor, or just laughing through tears seems like a great tool to put in your mental strength toolbox. I’m sure every human has once uttered, “You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.” Yet time passes and things look up once again.

To be fully alive means chasing what lights you up, finding and doing the things that make time disappear for you with the people you love being around. I’ve watched lives begin to change by simply taking a piece of paper (remember, I’m old-school), drawing a vertical line down the middle, and writing on one side What my life looks like now and on the other side What I want my life to look like and then slowly making decisions that move them in the direction of how they want their life to be.

Don’t believe you can curate your happiness? Sleep on it and get back to me.