Inspirations: What Makes You Happy
Shake yourself free from the ties that bind
Get yourself clean, have a real good time
Break on out of that prison cell
Wake on up out of that hypno spell
What makes you happy, uh-huh (yeah)
What makes you happy, uh-huh (yeah)
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it
What makes you happy
Kick it to the curb if it doesn't serve you
If it only hurts you, it don't deserve you
Give it to yourself every night and day
If you get lost, we will find a way
Find
What makes you happy, uh-huh (yeah)
What makes you happy, uh-huh (yeah)
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, do it
What makes you happy
We have a dream
Everything will come together
Wait, wait, wait, wait
I can't wait anymore
Say what it is
What you want to feel better
Find, find, find, find
What it is will you find
What makes you happy
Sittin' 'round, sittin' 'round, stick in the mud
Sittin' on the sofa like an old milk jug
Five four three two one blast off
Shoot up like a rocket to the life we love
We have a dream
Everything will come together
Wait, wait, wait, wait
I can't wait anymore
Say what it is
What you want to feel better
Find, find, find, find
What it is will you find
What makes you happy
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
Uh-huh
What makes you happy
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Edie Brickell
Listening to this song feels like opening a window after being in a room too long. There’s a lightness to it, an insistence that happiness is not some abstract reward but something we are allowed to claim. Shake yourself free from the ties that bind. It reads like a permission slip to myself, a reminder that some of the chains I carry are chosen, accepted in small ways, and that I have the power to drop them.
The repetition—What makes you happy, uh-huh, do it, do it—is less playful than it seems. It’s a mantra, a call to wakefulness. Life does not gently hand joy over; it asks that you recognize it and act, that you give yourself permission to prioritize yourself in ways society or circumstance often discourages. Kick it to the curb if it doesn’t serve you. That line lands like a small rebellion. Pain that is habitual or toxic can feel familiar, even comfortable, but happiness is a practice of letting go, of actively choosing light over weight.
I hear this song in the echoes of my own life—the moments when I realized that creating, moving, speaking, and loving were acts of self-determination. That joy could not wait for permission from anyone else, nor could it come from anyone but myself. Shoot up like a rocket to the life we love. That feels like both daring and fragile hope. It is the acknowledgment that we are allowed to reach for what we want, even if it scares us, even if the world seems to resist our claiming it.
There’s also a kind of communal pulse here. If you get lost, we will find a way. Happiness is not entirely solitary; it is nourished by connection, by those willing to remind us that we are not alone in the search. Yet the emphasis remains on agency. Say what it is you want to feel better. Find what it is. The act of naming desire, of pursuing it with clarity and persistence, becomes sacred.
This song leaves me with a sense of gentle urgency, a reminder that life’s sweetness is not incidental—it is something you wake up and reach for, something you insist upon. It is a permission to untangle the weights that have settled, to locate joy actively, to cultivate it fiercely, and to let it expand, in yourself and those around you. Happiness is not given. It is found, claimed, and nurtured, and that act itself is a revolution.
