Happiness Is a Choice

What is Happiness?

This is considered one of the toughest questions ever asked! Scientists tried over the years to study and define happiness, they found that defining happiness is as elusive as achieving it.

One of the simple realistic definitions I’ve seen so far says;“Happiness is a combination of life satisfaction and having more positive emotions than negative emotions.”I believe that’s a fair definition, but how can we measure that satisfaction? And what causes these positive and negative emotions?

Countless studies have shown that happy people typically have better jobs, make more money, more charitable, healthier and more satisfied with their marriages, but at the same time these studies ask a very interesting question; does happiness cause all these terrific things to happen, or is it the other way around?

There are many factors affecting happiness and they differ from one person to another and from one culture to another, we can try grouping these factors into 6 main categories;

Social Factors: Family, friends, neighbors, parenthood, stable family life, community, etc.

Psychological Factors: Respect, love,confidence, feeling appreciated, goals, Religion, spirituality or philosophy of life, values, trust, etc.

Environmental factors: Safety, weather, pollution, traffic, freedom, justice etc. 

Wellbeing Factors: Success, body, power, money, beauty, age, living standards, education, etc.

Pleasure: Experiences such as sports, charity, movies, eating, reading, writing, travelling, swimming or any hobby or act that causes pleasure in general. 

Adaptability: How to adapt and handle your share from the mixture of the previous five factors, and how you recover from life’s inevitable negative events.

You can see from the 1st five factors mentioned above that some are controllable while some might be out of reach, and each person has a share of these five factors of which he/she should work on improving somehow, also the importance of each share differs from one person to another making the idea of achieving happiness is a very personal matter as the formula is never the same.

Many people subconsciously link happiness to money believing it’s the ultimate reason for being happy, which is not true of course; money is an important factor but it remains one factor. In fact every now and then we hear about an actor or some rich and famous person killed themselves, what kind of happiness is that?!

Also researchers found that many of the upper class people fail in social factors, Psychological factors and the adaptability factor. It is not that the rich are bad people; many of them just live in insular worlds, more focused on themselves and feel less connected to others.

So, being happy is simply about getting the right mixture that suites you of the 1st five factors, and then adapt to that mixture while working on improving it in the best way possible.

So, after stating all this, is happiness really a choice?

Of course it is.

There’s a quote by an author named Charles R. Swindoll says “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”

Whatever mixture you have right now is the 10% and you have the ownership of the remaining 90%, which is the reaction of adapting and improving the mixture.

Don’t take the easy road by blaming others for your misery, take a stand and act, change whatever needs to be changed, ask for guidance if needed, adapt, move on, be optimistic, take a moment and enjoy the view…Choose to be happy.

Yousef Hani

December 6th 2014