Happiness Is A Choice

Are you happy? Would you know if you were?

Has your definition of happiness changed as you've grown older and more successful? Is it about accumulation, more toys, more exotic travel, new experiences, more of what you thought you wanted? Is all of that making you happy? Or, as Leo Buscaglia reminded us, is "what we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret that our willingness to choose life."

Happiness can mean doing something we love, having someone to love and something to hope for. Is that it? Is that enough of an understanding of how to bring "more" of the feelings of joy, surrender, surprise, delight that true happiness invites and provokes in us?

The Boston Globe recently reported that the most popular course at Harvard was about positive psychology, or the study of well-being. Its immense appeal took everyone by surprise. Just one year before, the instructor, Tal Ben-Shahar, offered the course for the first time, and although it was certainly a hit, with 380 students enrolled, no one could have imagined that the following year the number would have jumped to 855.

"For many years," says Ben-Shahar, "the people who were writing about happiness were the self-help gurus. It had a bad rap. It was all 'five easy steps,' rather than dignity and hard work. What I'm trying to do in my class is to regain respectability for the concept of self-help. It's a great thing, if you think about it literally. It's what this country was built on."

Dr. Martin Seligman and many of his colleagues introduced the idea of "positive psychology" a relatively new area of research that "studies the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive." Psychology has been rightly been criticized for its' sole focus on mental illness rather than mental "wellness". Several humanistic psychologists, including Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, and Erich Fromm, developed successful theories and practices that involved human happiness despite there being a lack of solid empirical evidence at the time behind their work, and especially that of their successors.

Positive psychology has explored the Pleasant Life or the "life of enjoyment", how people optimally experience, forecast and savor the positive feelings and emotions that are part of normal and healthy living (e.g. relationships, hobbies, interests, entertainment, etc.), the Good Life or the "life of engagement", the beneficial affects of immersion, absorption, and "flow" that individuals feel when optimally engaged with their primary activities, and the Meaningful Life or "life of affiliation" which examines how individuals derive a positive sense of well-being, belonging, meaning, and purpose from being part of and contributing back to something larger and more permanent than themselves.

With all of this good work, and the efforts of Donald Clifton, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and psychologists like Dan Baker, former director of the Life Enhancement Program at Canyon Ranch, we now have handholds on what many call the "new" science of happiness.
Dan Baker's book, What Happy People Know, confirms the wisdom of the research into what Seligman calls "authentic happiness" and "learned optimism." Baker notes that a major barrier to happiness is fear. He writes, "We all have a neurological fear system embedded deep within our brains, a neural network that once helped us survive as a species, but now limits our lives. The biological circuitry of fear is the greatest enemy of happiness."

We're written about how fear bind us, edits our hopes and diminishes our potential for happiness. Baker reminds us that fear is the repository for our past traumas, our fear of the future and our archaic instinctual terrors. Fear can be a gift, our way of staying out of the darkness and moving into the light of awareness and new beginnings. But if our fears own us, we have to break free...by awareness of those fears, and through the courage to challenge our fears to see if they are still real.

One of those fresh starts is the decision to be happy.

Yes, but how?

First, by love. Love yourself enough to create a life you will love living. Entertainment legend George Burns, whose own sense of purpose helped him live to 100, offered this wise advice: "Everyday, do something you love."

Here's several questions to begin your own happiness audit: "Am I living a life I love, and one that allows me to be happy?" Listen to the wisdom of your heart, and tell yourself the truth. Ask yourself:

• What brings vitality to my life? When do I feel most alive?
• What is my proudest achievement?
• What is my greatest gift? My legacy?
• For what are you most grateful?

These questions invite you to ponder the symphony of your experience, the missed notes, the flourishes and the coda. I don't deny that life can be rough, that you can (and will) experience mistakes, excesses, lies and lessons, and on occasional loss, grief and sadness. Even Charles Schultz, the creator of "Peanuts," the cartoon strip that brought us minor wisdom and wide smiles for decades, suffered his entire life with serious depression, a melancholy temperament and insecurities.

Happiness can become your default state and not some elaborate life lie by acknowledging your gifts, your lessons, the people in your "cast" who love and teach, tolerate and celebrate you. You can choose between the ambiguity and clarity.

Comments

[hypnotoad72]

Happiness is acknowledging one's self. To thine own self be true.

For some, happiness is smelling a flower.

For others, it's eating freshly baked cookies made by one's "partner" (that ought to cover every pairing without any indictments of being sexist, though men who shag toasters are bound to come after me some day...)

Others find solace in exploring the world, observing it.

If it was Freud who said everything we do in life revolves around sex, he needs to see a shrink. Unless people who observe and travel the world think they will get a date... but then, sci-fi geeks aren't exactly thinking that being the biggest trekkie will get them very far either...

[charon]

Freud seemed to be of the opinion that the general state of people was moderate suffering, and we should not expect more. Given the realities of life, the inevitable loss of loved ones and the decline and infirmities of aging, I suspect that he's right. There may be moments of happiness, but on average life is not a happy affair.

Kant, articulating the deontological position, suggested that happiness is not the proper goal of life, but rather, living in accord with the moral law (the summum bonum) is. Maybe happiness is overrated, and moral vision (wisdom) should be the real goal of life.

[stillfresh]

How can anyone be happy after eight years of George Bush and Karl Rove still on the loose?

[Cathexis]

While realize this was a clever quip, it does bring up a good point: It seems like so much advice on how to achieve "happiness" assumes an egocentric (self-focused) approach. Things such as "empathy for others," "a sense of Justice," etc. would be problematic, in this world.

[charon]

Drugs and alcohol.

[zengirl]

Life sure is suffering. It's good to examine "what is happiness?" Most of us need to go deep with that. Our fear is the not-knowing. Not knowing what this life IS. Maybe real joy and happiness arise with reverence for this mysterious, wondrous thing we call life. When we embrace ALL of life-- everything... the superficial ups and downs, and the primal fear of not-knowing" something we might call joy or happiness or peace fills all of Life. What is happiness? In the end, there are no words.

[wordvarc]

.

Nice piece.
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[Agentlady007]

Sorry , typos...
( I know I promised to pre- read before I post. Note to Huff; some of the pictures on the Home page this morning were not downloading properly... )

appiness is waking up in the morning without a hangover. It is looking outside and saying " today I am going to take a walk and look at the world". It is falling in love with love all over again, and knowing you deserve it. It is believing in yourself when no one else does. Or when know one else has time to care. It is finding a higher power that only you know is real. Knowing the love of your life is really in love with you. Believing that all things are possible with hope. Happiness is a connection to your soul. It is what is our center of strength, and the one thing that motivates all living things.

[Agentlady007]

Happiness is waking up in the morning without a hangover. It is looking outside and saying today I am going to take a walk and look at the world. It is falling in love with love all over again, and knowing you deserve it. It is believing in yourself when no one else does. Or when know one else has time to care. It is finding a higher power that only you now is real. Knowing the love of your life is really in love with you. Believing that all things are possible with hope. Happiness is a connection to you soul. It is what is our center of strength, and the one thing that motivates living things.

Good night.

[Michael7843853]

Many good ideas have been presented here. Virtually all of them have some merit. Certainly all of them are not universal panaceas. Here is another perspective. Bill Bryson's outstanding book A Short History of Nearly Everything, which is about the development of scientific knowledge through the centuries, repeatedly gives examples of how improbable life, as we know it, is. Life is to be cherished because it is so unlikely and unique. For example, only an extraordinary holiday from geological disasters allowed modern humans to evolve. We are long overdue for disasters that could mean the end of us all. The properties of water molecules, the tilt of the earth,...he gives SO many examples of how precarious is our position in the universe. Just existing, we have already won the lottery.

[chendri887]

Happiness is simply the brain chemistry we get and the environment in which we grow up. Anyone who struggles with mental illness knows this profoundly. Happiness is not a "choice." It is a chance event, one that depends on a myriad of complex factors that most people on this planet do not have the luck to experience. While reframing through cognitive therapy can have some influence on mood, it does nothing if the brain chemistry (or whatever) is flawed, damaged, harmed, not resilient. Only the strongest among us can "will" ourself to be happy. It is cruel to judge people for being unhappy. The best response is empathy so that, with "luck," those who are unhappy have the best chance to recover. If they do not recover, empathy is still the best response. We all grieve differently. And medication is always a good option if their is a biochemical factor involved.

[Agentlady007]

Empathy is nice. It is a nice way of encouraging someone without making them feel sorry about their sadness. Well said Chen.

[chendri887]

I like your style, Agentlady007. Your first conclusion on the Bale thing was, "Maybe his mother is a nutcase." My mother is a real cornucopia of mental illness, so that's where I went too. And thanks for the positive feedback. Empathy is the key to everything in the end, I think.

[Moonglum]

An interesting article in Cracked online, of all places

http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html

[yappnmutt]

if you are human then you suffer from your mind's constant attempt to shape your reality into a personalized version of 'this is your life" . in other words its up to you to delude yourself into a happy version of reality. the alternative is misery, afterall.

[livesbythec]

Excellent post and great comments. After just reading, "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle, I now understand how powerful and dictatorial our "egos" are in controlling all emotions. Unfortunately most of our brains run on auto-pilot and our thoughts (negative and positive) keep swirling around until we work ourselves into a frenzy. The whole point of meditation and being "aware" is to dump the ego, (The "I" statements: I don't like her, I can't believe she said that to me, I am so sick of this, I'll never get out of this rut," etc.). Incredibly, nonjudgmental "conscious" thinking helps stop all of the mind noise, thereby creating space for us to just live in the moment and appreciate all of the things that we can be greatful for. This approach to living really does provide for both inner and outer happiness.

[Gracehoper]

People who, having no major adversity in their lives, tell unhappy people that they haven chosen to such... well it just boggles the mind. Talk about self-satisfied claptrap.

[Trueheart]

Grace,
I initially had a similar reaction, but I thought about it and changed my mind. I experienced a serious period of depression in my life which practically immobilized me. There were some excellent reasons for this, but I won't go into listing the tragic events. I couldn't imagine how to get out of the deep hole I was in, both spirtually and physically. Finally, I started my journey up and out. And I did it by making a conscious decision to change my life. And I did. And I made it back into the light and gradually became re-acquainted with happy.

[thisisbatcountry]

i had a bout with severe depression too, and you're right. there came a time when i said "well, i'm obviously not going to kill myself so i might as well get better." it still took a few months before i was normal again, but it started with that decisive moment of choice.

[EarthToZoey]

I'll spare the details, but let's just say I had quite a bit of unfortunate, traumatic things happen to me growing up. I held on to that pain and held on to the notion that some are dealt a bad hand and others have it easy. Guess what? That's true. But I've also since learned that the *only* thing I truly have power over is myself. Even though I'm sure a thousand cheesy self-help books say this, I came to this conclusion on my own and by observing others who were happy. I was literally tired from depression. Then something clicked. I learned (slowly) to let go of pessimism. It was worthless to me. Now -- and I know this sounds ridiculous and like an infomercial but it's true -- now I am happier, more content, and more successful than I've ever been in life. Just like every other human (unless they're Tony Robbins) I still get pessimistic notions. But overall, I make better decisions because I *care* enough about myself to be happy. This isn't some religious conversion. I'm not exaggerating. It's a fact in my life and it just might work for you.

[lisakaz2]

D#mn straight. I'd trade my life in a heartbeat with just about anyone. I wonder how long someone would thrive in my shoes.I fall down a lot and I generally don't drink (it's a neurological problem that I cannot choose to dimiss, much as I'd like to do so).

[Agentlady007]

You are letting life make you unhappy. Happiness is about you making llfe. Instead of getting upset when you fall, understand this is what you have chosen to accept, and if you cannot change this thinking so you do not fall, think about how great you are to take the time to pull yourself up again, and the win you get after you are standing up again. Don't get frustrated, because you cannot help it anyway, right? Don't let life beat you up this way. You are better than that.

[Gracehoper]

"Happiness is a choice" is just something rich happy people tell their servants.

[Agentlady007]

Happiness is creating things. I think. Nothing more and nothing less. Choice has nothing to do with it. Choice is automatic when you create. One should be their own servant in my opinion.

[thisisbatcountry]

uuuummmmm.....it's also something my decidedly working class grandparents tell people. i agree. i resent most rich people's glib and callous attitudes as much as the next poor person, but i am in control of wether i laugh during the day or not.


besides, negative people really suck to be around.

[whatsthatsound]

No, it is something happy people tell everybody. I'm not always happy, but when I am, it is because of some decision I made; usually to do something I really enjoy. It might be easier for rich people to be happy, but since being happy can come from something as simple as spending five minutes playing with a stray cat that needs some attention and affection, it doesn't have to be.

[JamesRiddle]

The easiest route to happiness is through any type of meditation. When you correctly meditate you slow or stop the incessant interior monologue that plagues most everyone. This non stop interior chatter is pernicious, circular,stunts knowledge of the right thinking and serentity that is within everyone. It lays just below the surface and can be tapped to your enormous benefit.