It isn’t difficult to choose happiness. You can choose it or not. It’s just about chasing it every single day. So, if happiness is a choice, how do we actually choose it? Everyone says they’re pursuing happiness, and the great thing is, we have more control over happiness than you might realize.
“As much as 40 percent of our happiness is determined by the intentional activities we choose to do,” Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky writes in her book The How of Happiness.
This is so powerful and reassuring for people like us who believe our happiness is predestined by the circumstances we find ourselves in or genetics. It means that should we so choose, we can actually make happiness a choice.
“The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.” – William James
Why is happiness a choice?
You could also read things about how happiness isn’t a choice. Well, I totally disagree. The Greek playwright Aeschylus said it best: “Happiness is a choice that sometimes requires effort.”
No matter the climate of the world, we can choose happiness every day. Ultimately, it all boils down to how one perceives the situation and whether one chooses to find silver linings.
All of those up there are native speakers. Rugged individualism will make Person A dwell on hardships and struggles. Person B will know that something unfortunate occurred, but return to happy by recalibrating. It could be a million situations that this scenario applies to. Yes, including trauma, loss, and tragic health situations.
Sometimes choosing happiness can be hard, particularly when tough challenges present themselves in life. But ultimately, we decide to lift ourselves up and take that step or we don’t.
Acknowledge Your Spectrum of Feelings
Choosing happiness does not mean you do not acknowledge your full spectrum of feelings. Let’s face it, to choose and feel happiness we have to also choose and feel the opposite: sorrow, loss, grief, worry, and pain. When happiness is an intentional choice you make, it’s equally essential to acknowledge the range of other feelings you’re experiencing.
Give yourself time to feel what you need to feel. Depending on the scenario, this can take anywhere from hours to days. When you know what you’re experiencing, only then can you choose happiness in your everyday life.
Know What Happiness Means to You
Before getting into what happiness means for you, let’s clarify the meaning of joy vs happiness. BetterHelp defines happiness: “…happiness is something you are working toward within your own life; it’s an end goal, or destination.”
But “joy is a passing effect or transient sensation. These feelings are induced by some external source, such as good news or an act of kindness.” Because we know happiness is about the end game, work out what that might look like for you.
Happiness for me is a great love in my life and the desire to discover new things to learn and experience. How do you see your version of happiness?
Practice Gratitude Daily
We’ve heard a zillion times how crucial it is to practice gratitude. When you search for things to be grateful for you literally can’t focus on the negative. A zillion blessings in life to be thankful for.
Three things to give thanks for every day:
- Access to healthy food and clean water
- Mother nature so gorgeous the way she supplies
- With people you love and who love you
- Waking up each day
- Morning tea, a thing that gives comfort
- Stunning sunrises and sunsets
- Your children
As we go through life depending on our situations, we will have different things to be thankful for every day. I challenge you to seek out the blessings in your everyday life and begin to write them down. To begin: give my 52-week gratitude journal a try with journal prompts to help you get started. And some example questions can be…
What did you learn that you’re thankful for and who you are today? List something you enjoy about each season of the year. What were you grateful for this week? Name it all, big and little.
Look For The Silver Lining
Finding the silver lining in a tough situation is hard, and sometimes impossible in the greater scheme of things. But there are instances when it’s a lot easier to spot a silver lining. The silver lining is the ray of hope we need to focus on the positives even during the dark hours of life.
It starts with admitting challenges and obstacles but then searching for the easy-to-miss lessons, opportunities, or pockets of beauty the experience provides. If negative emotions or thoughts enter your mind, do your best to swap them out with positive ones.
Focus On Gratitude Like We Discussed Above — The Way To Find The Silver Lining
Develop Relationships That Matter
Social interactions, the good kind, are extremely good for happiness. All you need to be happy is spending time with your loved ones.
The bonds of connections with others, did you know that they THE keys to happiness? Well, this is what the longest-running study ever undertaken on happiness tells us. These intimate bonds can be with a spouse, a best friend, your children, a parent… you name it.
Vaguely I also propose you the TED Talk from Robert Waldinger, the Director of the 85-year-old study on happiness, check below.
“Money doesn’t make people happy. People make people happy.” – Steve Wynn
Live In The Present Moment
Spending time in the present means staying focused on the now, feeling and cherishing the moment you are experiencing.
The aim is to release all thoughts of the past or worries of the future and simply exist in the space that you find yourself.
Living in the moment could resemble:
- Active listening: Being fully present when speaking to someone — maintaining eye contact, listening, and responding appropriately (put the phones away, people)
- Noticing little things in your day and being grateful for them
- Making sure to do some mindfulness-based breathing exercises
- Recreational activity or hobby that you love and have enough time to do uninterrupted
- Exercising
- Doing a meditation practice
Allow Yourself To Be Happy
“As we evolve and have more responsibilities, we step into roles, responsibilities, and pursuits to live up to other people’s expectations. We are taught to delay gratification, and we forget how to be present and enjoy the little things of life. We slowly give up being happy as a natural part of our lives every day.”
This is quite eye-opening and we might not even know that we are delaying basic daily happiness. No, it is a missed opportunity to be happy today from within yourself.
Or you might have gone through a very difficult period with the death of a loved one, a serious health challenge, or another trauma and you are holding onto this. You don’t believe you can feel anything resembling happy at a time like this, not when someone you love is struggling, or you’re struggling.
I felt it during infertility, carrying my mourning and sadness for a very long time. I thought to let it go would mean I had given up on my dream of giving birth and being a mom — so I kept grieving and not letting happiness into my life.
If we simply allow ourselves to be happy, then we can all choose to be happy.
Have Fun
When you are out there living life and having fun it allows you to actually be happy.
As grown-ups, we have way too many obligations, but life is so much more than checking a box on a couple of things we need to score. So, we need to make time for fun — to laugh — to experience the now.
Here’s an activity for you to do:
Reflect on all of the hobbies or activities that you had a great deal of fun doing when you were younger (as a child, teenager, or young adult). These can be little things or they can be big things.
- Write everything that you used to do – photography, dancing, on a sports team, play music, hike, write, dinner out with friends.
- Highlight the activities you wish to incorporate back into your life.
Now, select one activity you want to begin this week. If you can get going right away, great. But you may also have to do a little research or planning to get started.
What happiness means?
Happiness is a highly personal and complex experience; it is generally defined as a state of well-being and contentment that arises out of living a meaningful and fulfilling life. Happiness is a sense of contentedness that is universally craved, despite its varied meanings for different individuals based on their values and experiences and aspirations. Some derive pleasure from the achievement of their goals; others associate it with their relationships, self-growth, and appreciation of life’s little moments or joys.
Happiness potently transports feel-good chemicals in the brain, like dopamine and serotonin, brought about by good emotions, relation bonds, and happy experiences. Nevertheless, true happiness eludes happiness as fleeting pleasure or material gain. It works within the spheres of living authentically and matching one’s actions to what they value most deeply. The meaningfulness of relationships, the feeling of purposefulness, and doing nice things for people are highly correlated to lasting happiness.
Happiness is a choice-a choice that can be made using mindsets and habits. Practices like gratitude, mindfulness, and resilience empower people to find joy even in the face of challenges. It is about embracing life as it is, living in the moment, and ultimately accepting the journey to find balance instead of looking for the perfect.
Finally, happiness is about creating a life that reflects who you really are, finding peace within your inner self, and celebrating that joy with another person. It is definitely not a destination but an entire journey toward finding and nurturing that which makes your heart and soul feel alive.
By sprinkling fun activities into your life, you will feel a breath of fresh air that you might not have realized was missing. Happiness is not just some feeling that a moment elicits, but something we choose every day, perhaps with every act, each line of thought, and the view we take of our location in life. Through gratitude, positive relationships, and prioritizing what really matters, you can develop a life of joy and fulfillment. The 8 strategies shared in this article give you the power to take back your happiness and show you that you always held the power within you to live a happier and more productive life. Start your day by choosing happiness and do this every single day.y!
Read also: Happiness – The 7 Habits of Happy People
