The Path Toward Happiness: Step 1
Would you like to be happier than you are most days? We all have good days and bad days, but do you wish that you could increase the number of days that you define as “happy” while decreasing the ones you call “bad” days?
Happiness can seem very elusive at times and that’s all the more true if you don’t understand the science of how happiness works. Science??? You might be wondering how science can help with what amounts to an emotional issue.1
It turns out that scientists who have studied “positive psychology”2 have done a lot of research and now have a pretty good understanding of what makes happy people happy. From their extensive research, scientists have been able to identify concrete steps that each of us can take in order to increase our happiness.
Today I’m offering you the first step: Focus on happiness itself.
That may sound too simplistic or too cryptic or you might even say “I’ve tried that!” The trick is in understanding what it means to focus on happiness itself.
To begin, let’s do a thought experiment: When I ask the question “what would make you happy,” what immediately comes to mind? Do you think about money? Fame? Good looks? Finding an attractive partner? Being in a committed relationship? Having kids? Having a successful career? Buying the nicest house in a fancy neighborhood?
Unless you’ve been trained differently from most people, your mind will immediately go to some thing that you think, if you had it, would make you suddenly happy — and forever. The thing could be money or love or attention or just about anything else that you could think of, but regardless of what the thing is, your belief is that having that thing will “fix” your happiness problem.
But that’s not how happiness works. What I just described is focusing on something that you think will make you happy, not what will actually make you happy. We’ve been conditioned to believe that things “out there” will make us happy. That’s why we pursue them with such voracity. But the experts agree that it’s not what is “out there” that makes anyone happy. It’s what is within us that makes us happy.
There’s a lot to unpack with regard to the subject of happiness and there will be plenty of caveats along the way. I don’t want to get wrapped up in too many details just yet. For now, we need to keep it simple in order to get started. Even though you may not understand it fully yet, accept that what you need do is this:
Decide to focus on happiness itself rather than on things “out there” to make you happy.
You don’t have to believe it yet, but trust me that you have the ability to create happiness within yourself.
Stick with me at Primrose Ponderings and I’ll show you how.
Your own issue(s) actually could be emotional, physical, or even spiritual. I’ll be getting into some of the other possibilities in future blog posts. For now, we simply have to start somewhere.
“Positive psychology” is a term that was coined when psychologists started studying happy people vs. those with mental illness and pathology.