Everyone talks about happiness. Everyone talks about feeling safe and loved. In fact, emotional safety is the elephant in the room for many relationships.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t have the right vocabulary to be sure of this within ourselves or be able to discuss it with our partners. I think that there are two key principles for emotional safety that are totally opposite to each other but when combined and found in one single person, he/ she turns out to be a complete charmer, because they are full of positivity. If they don’t have point one, they have a complete sense of point two; and if put together, it can create significantly more happiness for themselves, as well as for those around them. These two pillars/points are:

Point one - finding your safe place outside getting emotionally attached to that one special person whom you can look up to every night and tell the whereabouts of your day. That person may not be in a romantic relationship with you, but he/ she can still become your safe place.

I am talking about love in general, like parental or familial. There’s a comfort in knowing that someone cares about you so unconditionally and selflessly; it makes you feel valuable and significant. You can find your safe place in your best friend, boyfriend, husband, sister or any damn person on this earth.

Our safe place makes us smile, it makes us giggle and it makes us rejoice in the little moments we share together. In other words, it creates happiness in us as human beings. Is it nice to have a romantic safe place? Sure. Of course, it is. Everyone goes crazy over that, right? Plus, there are other benefits there too. There are different kinds of love and safe places, and they are all important. Humans are not meant to be islands – we need our rocks in this world, solid people who can keep us grounded and sane. It is great to find that safe place in someone else, but the good news is that, you can find that exact safe place within you too, which brings me to point two.

Point two: Finding your safe place inside - within you. Finding peace in solitude is blissful. Don’t get confused between solitude and loneliness.

There have been times in life when I tell people that I like going out for breakfasts alone. I can sit in the coffee shop alone for hours and hours, I can watch movies alone, I love to drink and get high alone, I love to go on long drives alone, I would love to do a solo trip once. And most of the times, I see raised eyebrows in response to all these statements of mine. But to me, self-compassion creates inner peace, which directly leads to happiness.

Instead of the pain of alienation, I feel the comfort and reassurance of connection. Sometimes, people ask me, “don’t you feel lonely living like this? What’s wrong with you?” The answer to this is, sometimes I do get lonely. Sometimes I get anxious and other times I feel sad. But these things aren’t necessarily connected to being by myself.

There’s nothing wrong with you if you want to travel alone. There is nothing wrong with you if you want to stay alone on weekends. If you’re in a relationship, it doesn’t mean that your relationship is unstable. If you’re not in a relationship, it doesn’t mean that you’re looking for one.

If you want to travel alone, it pretty much means exactly that: You like to travel, and you like to be on your own for at least some of the time. If you want to hang out with people, it is easily done. It is not like you are not capable of doing that. We all have a huge brain that is stocked full of pleasant memories and has the ability to generate fantasies, and surely it can’t be that hard to spend a few minutes enjoying by yourself with your thoughts.

Find happiness in the little things you see, and make this your habit, deliberately think positive.

This is how people get good at things: They challenge themselves to the point of failure. Athletes do it. Entrepreneurs do it. Personally, I’m working on being a gold-medal worthy daughter to my parents. And my safe place makes the job easy for me. So, venture on, friend. I hope you succeed in finding your safe place, either within you, outside you or if you are lucky enough, you can find it in a combination of both. I hope everyone does.

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