For as long as I can remember, I have chased happiness. When people would ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I would give the standard answer about a profession. But what I really wanted to say was, “I just want to be happy.”

But while small moments of happiness were achieved, they never lasted long. Around every corner was another roadblock in my quest for lasting happiness.

Turning 40 was a big wake-up call. I wouldn’t call it a midlife crisis so much as a midlife “aha” moment. I was a new mother and it hit me like a bolt of lightning that I needed to be a good role model for my daughter. Children learn by watching us, and if I wasn’t happy and fulfilled in my own life, what was I teaching her?

So I began slowly evaluating all aspects of my life. I created a checklist of things that made me happy in life vs things that didn’t. Being more mindful of how I spent my time was incredibly insightful and allowed me to realize the following:

I am happy when:

1. I spend time with family and close friends.
2. I stay true to myself and act in ways that reflect my core values and beliefs.
3. I keep active and fit.
4. I spend time in nature.
5. I spend time with animals.
6. I indulge in creative hobbies like writing and photography.

I am unhappy when:

1. I work too much and don’t have enough downtime.
2. I compare myself to others and feel like I don’t measure up.
3. I focus on the negative instead of the positive.
4. I have too much debt and not enough savings.
5. I allow others to disrespect my boundaries.
6. I don’t have enough “me” time.

While you can’t control bad things from happening to you in life, you can at least control how you respond to them. And in the past, my response was usually to get angry or upset, complain, and feel victimized and helpless. I didn’t realize that I had any power in these situations to react any differently. And that is why my cycle of unhappiness kept replaying itself over and over again.

If you can change the outcome of a negative situation, then do your best to be proactive and fix it. But if you can’t change something, why not accept it and shift your attention to things in your life you can control, things that make you happy and enhance your well-being?

While I still consider myself a work in progress, a friend I hadn’t seen in a while recently told me that I “seemed happier.” So I think my little happiness experiment may actually be working!