Happiness Is a Choice

What is happiness?  

Is happiness getting what you want? Is it getting rich? Famous? Successful? .The answer to most people is Yes. Most of the time, when we have got what we want we are happy for a moment – a short period of time, then we are no longer happy as we are looking for the next thing we want. So the pursuit of happiness is endless. We are never truly happy. That is one reason why we have people who are unhappy and depressed today.

An old popular song tells us ‘Don’t worry, be happy’. Can we really do this? Can we stop worrying and start being happy? Can we really choose to be happy? The answer is Yes and No.

But you say, well, ‘No’ we can’t choose to be happy. Circumstances around dictate what we experience and how we feel.

Today I had a really bad day – what is there to be happy about? My test scores are below 85% required for a Grade A – I am unhappy. In the morning, I just had an argument with a family member just before I left for work and I am in no mood to be happy. In these situations we let the circumstances and the environment cause us to be unhappy. Notice that I say, ‘we let’ the environment, the circumstances dictate how we feel. This means there is an alternative.

Happiness can be a choice. We can choose to be happy regardless of the environment as we have control over ourselves – we have internal control. Where is this control? It is in what we think about the situation of what happened to us. Do we take all the bad stuff that happened and in our minds make it worse by thinking and replaying the argument or decision?  Or do we think differently about the situation, and we have learnt a lesson and progress from there? How we think determine our happiness or unhappiness.

Sometimes, we have many choices before us. We do not know which to choose. After we have made a choice we worry that we have not made the best choice. Or these choices cause us to be undecided.  Or we regret making a choice we think to be wrong.

As an example: Students enrolling for college or university today have to make choices about their course of study, and some are unsure as they have many choices.  Some even make choices to change their course of study after one or two years of study as they believe they are not happy – they have made a bad choice.

Compare this to the time of our parents or ourselves (those of us who are older) who did not have much choice for higher education. We studied and graduated with a course of study. For the most part we got jobs related to our course of study or we worked another job unrelated to our course of study and we are making a living. We were happy we got a higher education.  This is not the case with this generation now.

Happiness come from choosing – not from having many choices.

Happiness come from choosing how we think, and what we think about. What is your choice today?

We can choose to be happy - it is always a choice. It’s just up to you.