Happiness is a Choice

 

 

 

Written in 1991, Happiness is a Choice is a book I couldn’t pass up at this stage.

After all, I write about getting gobs of books to foment serendipity, and more recently suggested that reading 200 books is as good as a mentor.

And I have written about You Can Be Happy No Matter What. Why is happiness not a choice?

 

Thirty Years Ago

Thirty years ago, I graduated from high school and was off to college. How different my life would have been if I had only a copy of this book! But, of course, that is not true. There is leap, and the net will appear and when the student is ready and whatnot, but I was neither leaping nor ready back in the 90s. The 90s were about keeping up with the McMansions in the suburbs for me: comparison, perfectionism, all the good rubbings of the trying-to-be-just-like-everyone else ’90s.

Now, thirty years later and pushing 50, I’m ready to choose happiness!

The book starts with the author admitting he had devoted himself to the pursuit of happiness. “We chose, as our daily intention, a happier ad more loving embrace of ourselves and those around us.”

And I’ll just be honest here, the first 2/3^rd of the book is near unreadable to the modern eye. He tells stories and writes filler to make this worthy of a book. Most books should be blogs. Most blogs should be tweets. Most shouldn’t tweet.

But let’s skip right to the good stuff: the Shortcuts to Happiness.

 

Shortcuts to Happiness

I am excited to see what shortcuts to happiness looked like 30 years ago. What could we have learned? He suggests:

These tools for taking charge, which fit so naturally and easily into our hands, allow us to replace discipline with celebration and substitute years of questionable study and therapeutic soul-searching with simple reminders. We are all fully equipped; we have only to exercise our wining option—our shortcut to happiness.

All six of these shortcuts are based on the idea that the decision to be happy is actually the decision to stop being unhappy.

We came into the world fully equipped to be happy and then became systematically educated to be unhappy and use unhappiness as a tool of growth, manipulation, and camaraderie. We did what we believed would be best to take care of ourselves, but now we can create concrete opportunities to choose differently…every shortcut, by enabling us to pull the plug quickly and easily on discomfort, maximizes our power to experience happiness (the feeling we enjoy when we are not being unhappy).

Now, let’s not quibble that happiness is externally based, and perhaps joy (and awe) are what we seek. But just like Self-Esteem became an unfortunate buzzword of the 90s, for better or for worse, happiness has always been an unfortunate buzzword.

Anyway, on the six shortcuts.

 

1. Make Happiness the Priority!

As he says, “Happiness first! Happiness now!”

All the exclamation points are his. But they are nonetheless true. It is relatively shocking to put your happiness first. This can cross the line into being selfish. But we need to get over the idea that self-love is anything other than necessary. If you love yourself enough to make your happiness your primary goal, then good on you! We are not talking about hedonism, though there is nothing wrong with that, either.

Why are you here if not for a good time? “In effect, we decide not to push any unhappiness or misery buttons. We have the power to make that choice. Even in the face of an attack or a treasure lost, we can affirm our first priority in every situation—to be happy.”

 

2. Personal Authenticity

Number two on the shortcuts to happiness list is a homerun. You have to be authentic.

Self-acceptance is key to overcoming the upbringing you suffered in the 90s. If your upbringing was at all like mine, comparison, judgment, and trying to fit in lead the list of cavities to fix.

Personal authenticity leads us to abandon the masks and masquerades we do not truly own so that we can embrace and celebrate our most central character. We give up only the laborious task of playing the games. In effect, we simplify our lives.

Wholehearted living requires vulnerability, which requires authenticity. If rule number one is to be happy, rule number is to be you.

 

3. Letting Go of Judgment

I guess they did know a thing or two back in the 90s. Another hit is to let go of self- and other- judgments. “By discarding judgments and embracing people and situations more openly, we not only provide ourselves with opportunities for great happiness but also sometimes pierce walls formerly viewed as impenetrable.”

We seem to spend most of our lives judging, and as physicians, it is a large part of our job. We need to diagnose what is in front of us, to label it so that we can treat it (or, let’s be honest, bill for treating it).

To let go of those absorbed beliefs from our family of origin and society, to give up other people’s shoulds, is to “fly on the wings of acceptance, love, and happiness!” (exclamation point his)

Be compassionate.

 

4. Being Present

Even 30 years ago, we knew there were health benefits from mindfulness.

Even simple meditation (or any activity that puts you into flow) counts; be present.

Aside from copious benefits from being present (developing “meta-cognition”) and the fantastic coincidence that most wisdom traditions promote mindfulness of one sort or the other, some just haven’t started yet. If you are focused on your health (exercise, eating, and sleeping well), well, then to me, a mindfulness practice is a no-brainer. It is time to start, and nothing could be easier. You just have to breathe.

 

5. Being Grateful

Gratitude is tied at the hip to Joy.

If you want to be joyful, have a gratitude practice in your life.

In fact, oftentimes, I call gratitude the sweetest way to embrace happiness. We can cut through all the misery by turning our attention to being grateful. In spite of all the catastrophes that might occur, we can find in little and big ways bottomless wellsprings for our thankfulness. Gratitude then becomes the shortest of shortcuts to happiness.

Be grateful.

 

6. Deciding to Be Happy

And the final shortcut is deciding to be happy. This is a bit like making happiness the priority, so we could have five rather than six shortcuts. But to start and end the list on the same note demonstrates that this is a practice. This is a daily decision to hold space for happiness. To decide to be happy.

I will leave if the pursuit of happiness is the way to obtain happiness for you or if happiness is even something that we should strive for. There are deeper seeds, but to decide to be happy rather than the alternative is ground stakes.

 

 

 

Six Shortcuts to Happiness.

Be happy. Be authentic. Be compassionate. Be present. Be grateful. Be happy.

Six shortcuts to happiness. They are as true now as 30 years ago when they were authored.

Too bad most of us missed the memo back then.

We have learned a lot, though. But then again, we knew a lot hundreds of years ago, too, that we have to learn again.