Choose to be Happy

Lately, I have been listening to a lot of podcasts and reading books about the science of happiness, positivity, and optimism.

Did you know happiness is a science? It seems so crazy when you say that but when you really think about happiness, what it entails and how we achieve it, it is easy to understand why it is a science.
I have been intrigued by this science recently because I have been struggling "finding" happiness in the day to day routine, finding ways to be positive in light of disasters that seem to be coming back to back and the choices of our country's leaders, and being optimistic in the future. That last one isn't about my future with my family, but rather the future of the world we live in.

All of this uncertainty led me to want to discover what truly drives happiness, positivity, and optimism in our brain. By nature I am a researcher, when I have questions or concerns I generally search until I come up with the answers that resonate best with me.

This morning, as I was listening to a particular podcast, a memory popped into my head. This memory is from high school, I believe my junior or senior year. I had this friend that while he could have fun and enjoy himself he truly believed that an overall state of happiness was not possible "for someone like him". To this day I am not sure what he meant by that. I believe to a core that we are all deserving for happiness to be our natural state. Circumstances will arise that feelings of anger, sadness, anxiety, guilt, ect will be appropriate and will drive us through these situations, but at the end of the day our life should be happy. Getting back to my memory. My friend would say things like, "why are you always happy", or "how are you always happy". The response I gave him was always the same, "happiness is a choice". He would then say, "well, my life isn't perfect like yours". Most of the time I brushed that reply off. One day, it really got to me and I kind of exploded at him. My life was definitely not "perfect". I did not grow up in the picture perfect family. My parents had divorced when I was young, as a result our home was sold and we moved to two tiny apartments, I was split between my parents, we did not have a lot of money, I had experienced deaths of loved ones, and I could go on. I told him all this to show my life was not perfect, no one's life is perfect. Then I told him that the circumstances we live do not create our happiness. Happiness is something we choose despite those things.

How funny that as a teenager I was so aware of that. I knew happiness was a choice and I chose it daily. The podcasts and books I have been reading basically all agree on that, we choose. The circumstances of our life do not determine our happiness, or whether or not we have the ability to be positive or optimistic. We choose. We choose how we will react to the cards we are dealt. The poorest person in the world, the richest person in the world, those with many friends, few friends and no friends, married, divorced, perpetually single, children or not, dream job or not, all have the same capacity to feel happiness.

We are in control of our own feelings. Our feelings are our brain reacting to a situation, we are in complete control over how we react to a situation. Now of course it is completely appropriate and normal not to be happy all of the time. We need to feel sadness, anger, stress. We need to be able to experience the full range of emotions to work through situations, to grow and learn from our experiences, but we do not have to allow those feelings to control our life. We do not have to allow our life to be anything we don't want it to be. It is completely up to us how we choose to see our life.

I kind of went on a tangent there but I guess what I'm trying to say is this life is ours. Happiness, positivity, and optimism is ours to have if we train our brain to react that way. Life happens, life is not perfect, perfection does not equal happiness, choice does.

How we all choose to get there will look different but it all starts with the decision to be a happy person. I love that. I love that it is my choice and no matter what happens in this life, no matters the choices others make that may or may not determine what occurs in my life, it is always my choice to be happy, positive, and optimistic.

So, today I choose happiness because I can.