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03 Jul
Is happiness always a choice?
question asked by Anonymous
The short answer: yes and no.
The long answer: its complicated! It’s very challenging to “choose” happiness if you are living like most people with a smorgasbord of unconscious or semi-conscious habits and expectations. One key to living a successful life is to become more aware of your conditioning. In other words, it is fundamental to become aware of your beliefs, expectations, and desires, many of which are not conscious. Once you have awareness you can then “choose” to keep those beliefs that serve you and change the one’s that don’t. For instance, if you have an unconscious belief ingrained from your family system that Blacks are less intelligent than Whites then your relationships with minorities will be negatively affected and guided by this belief. If you are female and expect all men to pay for the first three to five dates of a potential relationship then you will be disappointed or judgmental when you meet a guy who isn’t interested in this approach to dating. And if you don’t change this expectation, you might wind up nixing a potential soul-mate or fantastic business contact!
Happiness is only a choice if you are aware of what you are choosing. This is part of the reason why personal growth is so important to success in life and business. Very few among us were raised by deeply conscious and self-aware parents. As a result, we just didn’t learn all that much at home about how to cultivate happiness. And we didn’t learn it in school either. Where is there a course on happiness, intimacy, great relationships, communication, and so on in school. In fact, in graduate school in psychology, I never saw nor took a course on happiness and yet I was being asked in my internships and future career to deal with this topic every day!
Once you become more conscious and self-aware, happiness is largely a choice. When you are upset, you can choose to talk about it or express your feelings to others. You can choose to go for a run or exercise when you are feeling down. You can choose to go easy on yourself when you are tired or stressed. You get the idea!
The long answer: its complicated! It’s very challenging to “choose” happiness if you are living like most people with a smorgasbord of unconscious or semi-conscious habits and expectations. One key to living a successful life is to become more aware of your conditioning. In other words, it is fundamental to become aware of your beliefs, expectations, and desires, many of which are not conscious. Once you have awareness you can then “choose” to keep those beliefs that serve you and change the one’s that don’t. For instance, if you have an unconscious belief ingrained from your family system that Blacks are less intelligent than Whites then your relationships with minorities will be negatively affected and guided by this belief. If you are female and expect all men to pay for the first three to five dates of a potential relationship then you will be disappointed or judgmental when you meet a guy who isn’t interested in this approach to dating. And if you don’t change this expectation, you might wind up nixing a potential soul-mate or fantastic business contact!
Happiness is only a choice if you are aware of what you are choosing. This is part of the reason why personal growth is so important to success in life and business. Very few among us were raised by deeply conscious and self-aware parents. As a result, we just didn’t learn all that much at home about how to cultivate happiness. And we didn’t learn it in school either. Where is there a course on happiness, intimacy, great relationships, communication, and so on in school. In fact, in graduate school in psychology, I never saw nor took a course on happiness and yet I was being asked in my internships and future career to deal with this topic every day!
Once you become more conscious and self-aware, happiness is largely a choice. When you are upset, you can choose to talk about it or express your feelings to others. You can choose to go for a run or exercise when you are feeling down. You can choose to go easy on yourself when you are tired or stressed. You get the idea!
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