Newman And Larsen's Article: Having Control Over Your Own Happiness

Having Control Over Your Own Happiness

Introduction

Stephen M. Schuller and Acacia C. Parks research shows that circumstantial factors do not adequately explain different level of happiness. Positive reactions will contribute to everyone’s happiness just as well as negative reactions do. I agree with Schuller and Parks when it comes down to where your happiness comes from. I believe your happiness comes from how you react to every situation in your life and how you let it affect your happiness. Therefore, I do not agree with Newman and Larsen due to him believing your happiness is out of your control. Newman and Larsen state that most of what influences your long-term happiness is not in your control. Most circumstances that happen in your

Newman and Randy J. Larsen’s article “How Much of Our Happiness is Within Our Control?” claims that we have much less control over our happiness than positive psychologists uphold. This shows that you let things that happen in your life control if you are happy or not. These psychologists argue that you cannot make yourself happier. This is saying you can never attain everlasting bliss and that you get used to all the negatives factors in your life. I do not believe this statement is true because I think you can always put a positive spin on every negative factor in your life and that your positive factors in your life can last as long as you want them to. Therefore, I disagree with Newman and Larsen because I believe you are the only one that has complete control over your own happiness. They state that the influential environmental variables in our lives are just as uncontrollable than our genes. However, the reactions to the uncontrollable environmental variables is what controls your mood and happiness. Although there beliefs are different they still have some common ground. The authors of both articles agree that the people who are happier tend to always have particular behavioral characteristics such as gratitude, kindness, positive relationships,

I do not think anyone else in this world can choose whether or not someone else is happy or not. I agree with Schuller and Parks because they state that there are ways you can increase your happiness. I believe that if you are unhappy, it is up to you to fix it and change. Instead of letting negative environmental factors affect your life negatively, let them change your life positively. Always think everything happens for a reason and believe that the negative factors in your life are blessings in disguise. If you can go through life believing these things then you will live a longer and happier life. I think that if you go through life with the positive psychological interventions you will inevitably be happier. For example, if you help some out of the kindness in your heart and they end up being extremely happy you will be happier than not being helpful but knowing the person you could’ve helped has a negative environmental factor affect their life negatively. However, you are the only one that has control over your