Self Control

I have been doing a lot of inner thinking lately. I have been pondering whether I am living my life to it's fullest potential. I have been having an extremely hard time trying to determine whether to live my life to make myself happy, or to live my life consciously considering what might make others happy. I do believe that there lies a happy medium between these two extremes, but I find it painfully difficult to uncover. I care very deeply for my friends and family. I try to make everyone feel good about themselves and to be there when I can lend a hand. I want to see the people who I care about flourish and thrive.... but at what point does sacrificing one's own happiness for another's become self destructive? They say that if you are happy with yourself and if you do things that make YOU happy, that your contentment will shine and will contagiously infect others. I think this is what I am going to start doing in order to try to find this happy medium that supposedly exists. I will never intentionally avoid a friend's feelings to make myself happy, but I will move forward trying to be ME and do things that bring joy into MY life. The only problem I seem to come to is that I start feeling selfish. But, WHY? It is impossible to live your life only to please everyone else. I feel that people miss out on some great things about living life when they live to please others. I cannot control what others do, act, feel, or say. All I can do is control the way I react to it, and that alone is totally and undoubtedly under my control. If I am content, happy, joyful, and loving who I am and what I do, I think that others will, also. My true friends, those who TRULY understand me, who know me, who love me, who believe in me, and who trust me will join me in my journey to live life to the fullest and will join me in saying to hell with the bullshit. Life only happens once. ONCE. We get ONE time on this earth to enjoy all that the world has to offer. From now on, I will say forget the bullshit. I will lessen the petty, nonsensical, irrelevant mischief that seems to consume my life from time to time. Only I can make myself happy.... and only I can control what makes or breaks my days.