Introduction

If I have any advice or words of wisdom to give about happiness, it’s this: don’t choose to be unhappy.

If you had a choice between being happy and unhappy, what would you choose?

The answer may seem obvious. Hopefully you’d choose to be happy. But unknowingly, many people choose to be unhappy. This might have happened to you at some point in your life.

If you’re looking for a reason to be unhappy, you will find it.

Your mind will fill in the gaps, selecting the negative experiences while ignoring the good. You’ve probably been there at some point in your life, when you’ve felt unhappy about your current situation. It could be related to work, personal relationships, career, or family. You wish you could change it, and find a way to be more happy.

What if I told you, you can choose not to be unhappy?

Happiness is a conscious choice

Happiness is a choice. You may not realize this, and this is what probably causes you a lot of grief. You can consciously choose to be happy or unhappy. It’s how you react to your situation that determines how satisfied you are with your life. Do you plan and set goals? Do you review your year to understand what you did well, and what needs improvement?

I used to think that I had no control over my life. If I was unhappy, it was because of the people in my life, or events that happened to me. I had no control over it, so it wasn’t my fault. I was unwilling to be responsible for my own happiness.

But blaming other people didn’t really solve any of my problems. I had to realize that I can choose to be happy, and that starts with setting goals that make me feel fulfilled.

Why does happiness feel so unattainable?

You can search all your life for the secret meaning of happiness, and not get any closer to the answer. There’s nothing more demoralizing than feeling stuck in life and feeling like you can’t get out of it or move forward. Or sometimes you are looking for happiness in all the wrong places.

For me, I was misled into thinking that happiness can’t be achieved without great suffering and great sacrifice. I mistakenly believed that things would bring me happiness when I once attained them, they really didn’t.

I realized that you can spend your life being an unhappy person, and that’s not the way to live.

Maybe you spend all of your time around people who bring you down. Or you spend your life searching for the perfect career, which looks good on paper, but doesn’t bring you joy. You make decisions because it will result in a bigger payout in the future, but later learned that it was the wrong decision.

Maybe you blame the way you were raised as a young child, and you use that as an excuse for being unhappy.

Sorry to tell you this, but the truth is that you have the power to escape your upbringing, your education or lack thereof.

So much of what we do when we search for happiness is misguided

We think that these actions will finally make us happy in the end. But the error in such thinking is that nothing will solve all your problems unless you really reexamine and dig deep to know what your values are.

What do you care about? What makes you enthusiastic? What are your passions? These are some of the questions you have to dig deep to answer.

Happiness is unattainable for some because they search for meaning and for happiness in all the wrong places.

How you can choose to be happy

The happiest people aren’t the most successful, or the most rich. They’re people who have found the secret to a fulfilling life. I used to think that in order to get somewhere meaningful, I had to suffer in order to get there. After all, anything worth having would be at the price of your blood, sweat, and tears, isn’t it? I also once believed that only people with an extraordinary amount of luck are rich and successful.

You make decisions because you think it’ll make you more money, bring you more happiness, or a higher social status. But happiness doesn’t have to be a myth that you endlessly chase.

We can control whether we are happy or not

This starts with believing that we are in control of how we react to things that happen to us, whether good or bad. It starts with believing that you have a conscious choice over your happiness.

The process of searching for happiness is arduous. So find the smallest kernel of happiness. It might be buried underneath personal issues and problems but once you find it, hold onto it.

I used to look for external validation in order to be happy. But I’ve learned that happiness starts internally, and no one but yourself can fix how you view your situation. So stop looking for external validation and basing your self-worth on it. You can’t please everyone, so looking for everyone’s approval is counterproductive.

How can we choose to be happy?

The answer is simple. Stop doing things that make you unhappy. That includes stop associating with people who make you unhappy. Stop chasing after a job that brings you money at the expense of happiness. You can work really hard for these things but find out that it doesn’t make you happy after all.

Conclusion

If you change the way you think about happiness, you take back the power of being in control of your life. You’re no longer a victim, passively accepting what happens to you. It can be a life-changing epiphany.

You own your failures, but that means that you also own your successes. No one but yourself is responsible for how you react to whatever happens to you, whether it’s good or bad. That includes making wise choices.

Feel empowered to make decisions that make you happy today. I don’t mean getting misled into pursuing instant gratification. Do a lot of old-fashioned soul searching to find what really makes you happy. When you look back on your life, can you really say that you lived life to its fullest?

Finally, happiness starts with yourself. No one is going to change your situation. You have to do it yourself. You are responsible for your own happiness.

You alone can make that decision to be happy. It’s completely within your control.

I hope you find your happiness.