How To Be Happy

I think one of our primary goals on this earth is to be happy.

Call me selfish if you will, but almost all of our actions are motivated, either directly or indirectly, by a desire for happiness.

Sometimes it’s for short-term happiness, such as buying yourself ice cream just because. Other times it’s long term, such as forking out thousands and thousands of dollars for higher education.

Either way, we want to be happy, either now or later. Or both, preferably.

But the question that stumps so many of us is: how?

We’re not always clear-headed about what it is that will make us happy, especially since it’s so ambiguous. Is happiness pleasure? Contentment? Satisfaction? Is it a chemical, or is it the knowledge that things are the way you want them to be? Is it meant to be pursued here and now, even if it comes at the price of long-term happiness, or the other way around? Or maybe are we supposed to take the average of the two?

It can be confusing business. And maybe there’s not one right answer for everybody. But I do believe there are some tips that can aid everyone in their search.

Buddhism talks a lot about happiness by looking at the nature of suffering. One of the Four Noble Truths is that suffering is inevitable. It’s just going to happen. In other words, our lives aren’t always going to go the way we want them to, due to circumstances outside our control.

So here’s the first thing I glean from this basic truth: happiness is transient. When it comes to us, we should recognize that it can leave just as easily. And we should be grateful for it when it happens.

But here’s the second thing: suffering is transient, too. It will happen, but as they say, this too shall pass. What it takes to weather the storm is patience, and recognition that, in the grand scheme, a little bit of suffering really isn’t that big a deal.

I like the photo of the Buddha statue in the snow as a metaphor. He sits, constant and eternal, as the weather changes and flows around him. Sometimes it’s sunny and warm; other times he becomes buried in snow. But no matter the circumstances, he sits with a little smile on his face. He’s seen it all, and he knows that just as snow is part of the earth’s natural cycle, so too is sun. And he just has to wait for it.

I’m sure you’ve known someone like this: they always have a smile on their face, always have a positive outlook to offer. They are a rock, steady and stable, grounded in reality, not moved by the rise and fall of outside circumstances. I certainly know a handful of these people, and I asked a few of them what they think is the trick. Here are the two main things they talked about.


PERSPECTIVE

It’s so easy to get caught up in the pitfalls of our day-to-day life. Here’s an idea: write down all of the things that make you unhappy through the course of your day. Every single thing. At the end of the day, look at your list and think about how ridiculous it is. You missed the bus, so you were late for work or school. Sucky, sure. But life goes on. Tomorrow, you won’t even remember it. Besides which, please consider how lucky you are to have a job, or to be enrolled in school. Consider the luxury of cheap public transportation. Life is pretty awesome; why are we getting hung up on the tiny little things that aren’t perfect?

Perspective also means where you focus your attention. Will you pay more attention to what goes wrong or what goes as planned? I'll tell you right now that pessimism is more common than optimism, and I think that's because it's easier. We have to go out of the way to notice when things DON'T go wrong, because it's less obvious than when everything blows up in our face. But if we can practice gratitude for life's little gifts and blessings, it can make a big difference in the way we perceive the world.


CHOICE

Think of it as a matter of dignity: the trivial things that happen to you every day DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT to make you unhappy. You deserve better. They can only make you unhappy IF YOU LET THEM. And it’s not always easy, but it just takes practice. Honest. When it comes to the self-discipline it takes to make this happen, I’m a firm believer in the difference between thoughts and emotions. Emotions are triggered by events: when the crate of eggs drops and they break all over the floor, our first emotional impulse will probably be anger or frustration. But it’s what comes NEXT that is crucial: how we will choose to perceive it.

Here’s the process:
1. Anger—arrrgh!! (This will happen, and it's natural. But the key is step 2...)
2. Deliberate thought—okay, I don’t need to let this ruin my day. In the grand scheme of things, this is so not a big deal.

By exercising our discipline by going through this kind of routine every day, we can literally train our minds to be able to skip that first negative emotion and go straight to the deliberate, disciplined thought.

Optimism can be learned. It’s a skill, and as such, some people are born with a knack for it, and the rest of us just have to work harder.

And that’s really the crux of the whole issue: If you’re not happy, you can work to become happy. There are plenty of things that have been demonstrated to help:

-TAKE ON a new perspective.

-PURSUE goals that you care about.

-ENGAGE in every area of your life; make it count.

-FOCUS on the good, rather than the bad.

-EXPRESS gratitude.

Notice that these are all action words. Nowhere is there anything about BEING a happier person, or BEING more optimistic. They’re not character traits that you either have or you don’t. Happiness is, as they say, the journey, and a journey is made up of each step you TAKE.

Here's one last thing I want to mention, and it may be more important than anything else: this is all meant to apply to our lives in times of uncontrollable misfortune. However, sometimes there are terrible things about our life we CAN control. If the answer to the question "Is there anything you can do about it?" is yes, then the next question is: "Why aren't you doing it?" I'm a believer in self-efficacy, as I have discussed in earlier blog posts. Sometimes it comes in the form of us choosing to be happy; sometimes it means we take our lives in hand and make the changes we need to make in order to BE happy. All we have to figure out is where we fall on that spectrum, and then do something about it.


These are just my half-baked thoughts on the subject. What I'm interested in, really, is hearing from miserable people. I want to know why these things might not work. Let's have a conversation about it.
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Here's some handy links if you're interested in Positive Psychology, which greatly inspired my thoughts in this post.

Authentic Happiness: The Official Website of Martin Seligman, the psychologist at the forefront of the Positive Psychology movement. This great website describes his theory, has helpful questionnaires and gives great tips for what it takes to be happy.

TED Talks: Martin Seligman on Positive Psychology: Hear it in his own words.

The Happiness Project: An extensive blog hosted by Psychology Today with a plethora of interesting ideas and theories regarding how to be happy.



Photo used with permission. Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21556557@N06/2284840450/

Why I Love Psychology

I wrote the following essay as an entry for a $500 scholarship. The prompt was extremely open ended:

Requirements: Junior or Senior Stevenson College student
Majoring in Psychology and/or Legal Studies
Demonstrated academic excellence

Application: Submit a two-page statement explaining how you meet the scholarship requirements.
Include information regarding your background, interests, future plans and potential major(s).

So I basically wrote about why I love Psychology, what I've done with it so far, and what I hope to do with it in the future. I felt that this essay was blog-worthy, so here it is.

(Oh, and I also won the scholarship. :P)

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As a child, I spent a great deal of time traversing the roads of America with my parents. One of the primary consequences of such a hobby is getting to meet lots and lots of people.

There's a wide variety of interactions you can have while on the road. There are those people who are little more than nameless faces you catch a glimpse of from your car window. There are those you meet for thirty seconds, then never again. There are those who you have the chance to talk with just for a few minutes, and, though your time together was brief, they make a lasting impression on you. Then there are those who will gladly share their entire life's story if you have the endurance to listen for long enough.

I couldn't begin to count the people I've met in these twenty-one years. But even if I don't remember the vast majority of those individuals, the effect of having passed, ghost-like, through so many lives has been profound. Having gotten firsthand some idea of just how many people exist in this world made me determined to understand them better, to perceive that crowd as more than just a fast-moving blur. Then one day, I discovered Psychology, and things suddenly started clicking into place.

When I took my first Introduction to Psychology class, I knew I had stumbled across something amazing. It was unbelievable how much I found myself enjoying the material, never bored, always enthusiastic about learning more. Before I'd had no idea what I wanted my life to look like. But with Psychology, it was suddenly obvious what path I wanted to take.

I have spent the last four years immersed in the field of Psychology, which I think of as the study of people. To me, there is nothing more satisfying than to learn about the research behind the behavior I witness in myself and those around me every day. To begin to discover why we are the way we are seems like a miracle, like turning the lights on in a world which had, till then, been very dim.
At this point, I have found myself unexpectedly on the far side of my undergraduate career. When I made the realization that, soon, Psychology would mean more than taking notes and passing tests, I made the effort to throw myself headfirst into the field.

I started with research, connecting with my professors to find a place in their labs. I was intrigued at the idea of seeing Psychology in the making, as its academic minds attempted to solve the unsolved mysteries. I worked for five months as a Research Assistant, and was introduced to hot-off-the-press work that was being done in the field of Cognitive Psychology. I saw what life in the lab was really like, meeting with participants as I collected data. It was eye-opening, to be sure, getting a glimpse of the nuts and bolts behind what I'd been learning.

I went on to Teaching College Psychology, where I got the incredible opportunity to act as an Instructional Assistant to students in an Intro class. Together with the other IAs, we waded our way through the frightening new depths of imparting our knowledge to others. I led my own discussion section where we discussed and explored the material we had talked about in lecture. I encouraged the students to work with the curriculum on many different levels, so as to thoroughly absorb it, and in doing so, I was able to re-cement the knowledge as well.

Now, in my final year, I have embarked on the most rewarding and nerve-wracking journey yet: putting my knowledge to use out in the real world. I have begun an internship with Front Street, Inc, a local program that provides residential care for the mentally ill in the community. I have been given the chance to see the reality of a life in the mental health field, helping individuals to make the best of their difficult situations. Looking into the faces of the clients at these facilities, I can see the names behind the statistics, the humanity inherent-- but often hidden-- in the field. I am given a constant reminder that Psychology extends beyond textbooks and classrooms; it is working towards the daunting goal of providing care and relief for those who suffer mentally.

Post graduation, I am hoping to put my education to work as a Clinical Psychologist, working to both further current research and to help those who need it. I hope for the chance to, every day, have one-on-one conversations with other human beings as, together, we try to figure out what's wrong and what's right with us as people. I hope to get to meet some of the individuals in that nameless crowd I drove past as a child, to gain witness that we are all of us human, mixing our own distinctiveness into the world, making for a terrifying, confusing, and fascinating place to exist.