Welcome to Happiness 101: the first in a series of posts dedicated to this all important subject!
Happiness is simple and we all knew how to be happy as children. But then life happened.
We were taught the ways of the world–a world that cares far more about other things that it does about happiness–and so, we forgot.
We got caught up in the illusion and we forgot what we had come here knowing as children:
- that happiness is the most important thing in life; and
- that even in our state of confusion, we still search for happiness because we know how important it is.
If you’re new here, or somehow don’t fully understand how important happiness is, please read this post: Why Happiness Matters.
If you’re ready to move on, then let’s re-discover how simple happiness is.
Happiness 101
Happiness is the good feeling we experience as a result of thinking happy thoughts.
Let’s unpack this a little.
Most of us think happy thoughts from time to time.
But we also go days, weeks and months without them.
And sometimes, even when we have a great reason to feel happy, we don’t take the time to savour it, because we’re rushing from one thing to another.
So there’s probably a lot of time where we’re not thinking happy thoughts.
And there are all the times that we’re thinking unhappy thoughts.
If you’re a typical person moving around this world, it’s all too easy to think unhappy thoughts.
The news, social media, books, magazines, and the entertainment industry all do a good job of hooking us into things that don’t make us feel happy.
The term, ‘fear porn’ comes to mind. I’ll add to that with a few ‘porns’ of my own: there’s depression porn, despair porn, dystopia porn, violence porn, thriller porn, anger porn, righteous indignation porn and on and on it goes.
So, assuming what we want is to feel happier, more often, we then realise there some key things that we could do:
- Think happy thoughts;
- Do happy things–things that make us feel good and create happy thoughts;
- Don’t think unhappy thoughts;
- Don’t do unhappy things–things that make us feel bad and lead to unhappy thoughts; and
- Do all of the above actively–be conscious and deliberate about them.
Doing Happiness
Reading through the above list, you realise that 1 and 2 go together, and so do 3 and 4.
You can’t do happy things and not think happy thoughts.
And you can’t do unhappy things and not think unhappy thoughts.
Some examples of ‘happy things’ we could do would include things like making art, practising gratitude, or exercising.
On the other hand, some ‘unhappy things’ could include things like watching the news, complaining, or holding on to resentment.
In coming posts, I’ll be exploring actions, habits and processes that address all five of the topics mentioned about.
Choosing Happiness
When people say that ‘happiness is a choice,’ what I think they mean is that we have to choose to do the things that make us happy. And equally, we have to choose not to do the things that make us unhappy.
We actively guide ourselves on a daily basis and we don’t leave anything to chance.
And the great thing about this is that it’s telling us, we’re the ones in control. We are the ones choosing. We have the power.
So, I hope this has you pumped and excited!
I’ll see you in the next one.
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