Right this very moment there are as many reasons to feel good in your life, to feel joyous and appreciative, as are there reasons to feel miserable. It's a matter of perspective, focus, intention and relentlessly practicing positivity until it becomes a habit that is too ingrained in your being to break.
While it may seem idealistic or dismissive to give such Pollyanna advice when a person is for example, suffering from an illness, financially strapped, losing their job, suffering with depression or anxiety, going through a divorce, battling with a sullen or seriously troubled teen or dealing with any negative life event, people can shift their downer day to a more positive place. The shift can take minutes, hours or even days depending on the severity of emotional or physical pain, but it can happen.
Choose to be Happy, Right Now, Right Here
Robin Lloyd in the 2007 LiveScience article "The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them," writes that while psychologists continue to discuss the "keys to happiness" with patients, many continue to adhere to habitual ways of negative or irrational thinking. It's believed that people can only change chronic patterns of thought when they actively, with intention, decide they want to. As Abraham Lincoln said, "Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be."
It's no accident that canned advice, corny or trite truisms like old Abe's words have been quoted for centuries as timeless healing salves for the soul. These ancient but simple beliefs work; they represent beliefs and subsequent attitudes that move people out of mental misery and into a better place in their lives.
An individual's attitude inevitably determines their altitude, which is not to inject a cold o...
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...ng is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose."
Rome wasn't built in a day and most people can't instantly reverse a bad situation or mental rut that grew over many years, but everyone can move towards feeling good by building a habit of genuine positive thought, through daily and momentary appreciation, by choosing to be happy, by focusing less on "why?" and more on how they want to feel now.
Joyful living is a practiced process of mental and external adjustments, a life of habitual positive thinking that manifests a better feeling life. It is a process of living that at first can feel like one step forward, two steps back, until one day, life feels like three steps forward and no steps back.
Sources:
* Lloyd, Robin, "The Keys to Happiness, and Why We Don't Use Them." LiveScience.com. February 27,2006.
However, happiness also takes into account a wide range of other aspects of our lives, including our thoughts and actions, and even genetics. Therefore, happiness should be defined as the amalgamation of how we think and act, and how we interpret our experiences as positive or negative. What this means is that in order to become happier, we must simply force ourselves to become more optimistic. This is easier said than done, however. In order to have a noticeable increase in happiness, people must be willing to make lifestyle changes in addition to changing their mindset. However, the difference between optimism and delusion is a fine line, so people must be cautious to not exaggerate the positive parts of an experience or become overly optimistic. If we practice seeking out the positive views of our circumstances, with time we will find ourselves happier than
Happiness is a feeling that everyone tries to accomplish, yet some people sometimes only capture portions of it. In Brian Doyle essay, “Irreconcilable Dissonance,” he explains that divorce is becoming common among many couples today. Most couples are putting less effort into making a relationship/marriage work. There are many couples who get married, and most of them know that if the marriage does not work that divorce is always an option. With divorce in their back of their mind they lack the true meaning of having a happy marriage. In Eduardo Porter essay, “What Is Happiness,” Porter states that happiness is determined by people’s qualities in their life. People who experience a positive viewpoint on life and about others are overall to
the point where if someone is not happy 100 percent of the time, they are told to seek immediate help. But what is the point of having thousands of other emotionssadness, anger, and fearif a person is only supposed to feel one? Positive psychologists believe that instead of being sad or having neutral feelings, individuals should be happy. From another point of view, Susan David, author of “Don’t Worry Be Gloomy,” and Sharon Begley, author of “Happiness: Enough Already,” both agree that having “negative” emotions is not as defective as people portray them to be. Experiencing other emotions is just as important in life as happiness , and should not be shunned, because these emotions contribute to thinking clearly, encouraging perseverance, and, in the end, making people unintentionally happy.
These types of studies rarely are able to bare results. Since usually these studies tend to fall apart within 10 years, whether the researchers get distracted, the people being studied withdraw or the funding stops. However, through persistence and luck this study lasted more than 72 years with 60 subjects still remaining, almost all of which are over 90. This groundbreaking study found many interesting facts about what makes us happy. Robert Waldinger the 4th director of the program points out the most interesting finding in this study, in his 2015 Tedtalk:
This mostly-universal desire for happiness whether experiential or materialistic is sometimes studied by careers such as neuroscientists and behavioral scientists. This is best explained by Schoch in “A cr...
I feel much better being positive than I do when I’m sad or upset. When I’m not in a good mood, I am not a very fun person to be
Utilizing a pie chart, she illustrates the crux of her research; 10% of our happiness is increased or decreased by our circumstances. 50% of our happiness is increased or decreased by genetic predisposition, 40% is within our ability to control. We have “opportunities to increase or decrease our happiness levels through what we do and how we think” (22). She provides 12 specific happiness enhancing activities. She implores us to commit time, resources and energy to this “intentional activity”. Promoting these changes in our lives to accommodate being happier, which will benefit everyone in the end.
As I was about to sit down, Howard Cutler gestures “Well happiness is a hot topic. We are always questioning what HAPPINESS is and its derivation. The Dalai Lama and I had many discussions about the sources of happiness, and he always has a positive answer for everything. Yes, it can be a heated topic but we all have our own opinions about the meaning of HAPPINESS.” According to Cutler, he thinks “Sooner or later our overall level of happiness tends to migrate back to a certain baseline. Psychologist call this process adaptation” (22).
It is a common thought that happiness is key to a successful life, and many try to find out how to achieve the
There are many situations in life where you can feel upset or melancholy due to a negative situation that you are in. This is a fact of life, for we all face adversity sooner or later. Though negative situations aren’t easy to overcome, there are ways to turn negative situations into positive ones. The three main ways i’ve found to be effective include: being optimistic, taking adversity as a lesson, or remembering that everything will get better soon. Those have helped me through my tough times, and I hope they help you through yours.
Contrary to belief, genuine happiness is very rarely found at the bottom of a shopping basket or on the leather seats of a brand new car. Often we hear the cliché saying “Money can’t buy happiness” but this is in fact true. Whilst the elation and delight brought from finally owning a wanted item is extraordinary, you must remind yourself that your happiness should not become dependant upon your ownership of this item. Being happy is not something you can purchase from a shop or car dealership, it is the way you take on life. Unfortunately, happiness does not have its own aisle at shops and never will.
Gertner, Jon. The Futile Pursuit of Happiness. New York: The New York Times, 2003. n.d. Web. 27 Nov 2009.
Gilbert, Dan." The surprising science of happiness." Ted Talks. Ted. Ted Talks, Monterey. 1 Feb. 2004. Lecture.
The first component essential to living an abundant life is the ability to feel joy. Joy is an experience of wellbeing in a person’s life. Joy is in some cases something that a person has no control of feeling, but in many cases it is an experience that reinforces positive behavior. Therefore by experiencing joy, a person is more likely to do positive things for themselves and for others. Joy is the basis of many of the positive aspects of life as Abraham Hicks states, "If you woul...
Happiness is a state of mind. The dictionary definition is "feelings of joy and pleasure mingled together”. A feeling of happiness is more than just an experience of joy or pleasure. It is a state of mind where the individual feels that “life is good”. As Aristotle says, “happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” I believe that everyone wants to be happy in life. One is abnormal if he prefers to be sad and alone.