How To Choose Happiness and Live No Other Way

Are you happy? Why or why not? How much time do we spend in the pursuit of happiness? I spend almost zero time in the pursuit of happiness. I learned how to choose happiness, and you can choose too.

I spend almost zero time pursuing happiness because I live a Minimalist lifestyle. As a Minimalist, I actively remove all the unnecessary from my life and choose happiness. I get rid of it if it does not serve a positive purpose or give me a positive feeling.

As a result, I am almost always happy, and when I am not satisfied, I learn to choose happiness, and you can, too.

Choosing to be happy is not simple, but it is not difficult. I will show my process, and hopefully, you find value and join me on the road to successfully choosing happiness.

What Is Happiness

Most of us believe happiness, pleasure, and joy are all the same, but deep down inside, we know they are different. I associate pleasure and enjoyment with brief moments and usually experience them in short moments.

I associate happiness with longer, more sustained moments. Happiness is when the stars align and you live your core beliefs and values 100 percent of the time.

At first glance, pleasure and joy would seem more desirable; in certain situations, I would agree, they would not sustain happiness.

Happiness is whatever you believe it to be. At times, happiness was as simple as a warm meal. The dictionary meaning of happiness is.

“the state of being happy”. 

– Dictionary.com

Yuck! How lame is that?

Happiness is whatever works for you at any given time. Is happiness a choice? Can you choose happiness? What is your definition of “Happiness” at this time?

The Benefits of Being Happy

True happiness is experienced when one is genuinely grateful for what one already has. One should not compare oneself to others or fantasize about buying anything else.

Benefits Of Being Happy:

• Physically healthier
• More productive
• Attracts a strong network of family and friends.
• Positive influence on others.
• Well-liked.
• People love to be around you.
• Less stress.
• Finds value in the simple.

Always look for at least a little bit of happiness in every situation. As they say, live like every day is your last. Because one day it will be.

Stop Begging For Happiness

Happiness is joy and pleasure experienced over a long and sustaining period. Don’t you deserve that? 

We all deserve happiness, but chasing it usually becomes problematic. It can lead to an obsession or even addiction. Seeking the pleasure of a dopamine rush from the love of money, risky sex, food, social status, or even shopping can be problematic.

Even worse is seeking pleasure in the excitement can be the most pleasurable of all. It can be like CRACK. That sometimes drives crime, gambling, and sex addiction. 

No average person is always happy, nor would any normal person want to be. For ordinary people, seeking happiness will become a slippery slope. That is the beauty of true joy. It would mean nothing or be enjoyable without bad times. The bad times make good times more satisfying.

The secret is to learn to manage a wide variety of emotions positively. Hell, I feel depressed more times than I would like. I even may feel unhappy as much as I feel happy. 

I believe they are the same. They are both temporary! Good times end, so I enjoy them as much as possible. 

On the flip side, bad times will also end. That is why I sometimes try to enjoy them. I know they are temporary and will pass. There is no better feeling than surviving a lousy time while walking into a more significant time.

Remember, happiness does not mean the absence of negative feelings. Whenever possible, choose happiness.

Decision fatigue will hurt happiness. People make over 35,000 unconscious decisions a day.

The brain has a limited number of high-quality decisions it can make in a day before the quality of decision-making begins to dip. These decisions range from menial ones, like what to wear in the morning, to complex ones, like whether or not to take a job offer.

They all require brain power and energy. The brain consumes massive amounts of energy, and the many choices we make during the day can wear us down.

Zap our energy and drive us towards negative feelings. Design your life to where you don’t need to make many small daily decisions. Eliminate them.

Successful people like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and others choose to wear the same wardrobe every day. Some even eat the same breakfast day after day.

This reduces the number of trivial decisions they must make in the morning, leaving the high-quality brain to live longer into the day.

They get up in the morning and only have to make more critical decisions because Routine takes care of most of the morning’s ritual choices. It also makes shopping for clothes easy. Five minutes, five pairs of the same pants and shirt, and you are done for a month, not more.

You reserve quality brain power to make better choices longer into the day. When you are dead tired and want to get home and get into bed, you are prone to make bad choices, like eating that whole pint of Ice Cream and watching three episodes of a show on Netflix instead of getting some rest. 

A high-quality brain would avoid those choices and remind you to choose happiness.

Just Choose Happiness

Train yourself to choose happiness in all situations. It may be easier said than done but it can be done with time and practice.

“Most people overestimate what they can do in a day and they underestimate what they can do in a year.”

-Unknown

It doesn’t matter how long it takes; the result will be worth it. Think happy. Problems do not define you. You will have to do what you have to do anyway. Why not choose happiness? Refuse to live any other way.

Happy people tend not to allow themselves to be overwhelmed by their situation. Like Minimalists, they do not look for happiness in possessions, people, and things.

Don’t block or suppress negative feelings—that is not what I am saying. Experience them, feel them, and live them. Give them a few minutes and try to be done with them. Choose Happiness and work on that.

If you have stubborn negative feelings or even depression, please seek professional help. There is no shame in needing help. No one can do everything for everyone, and we all will benefit from help from time to time.

You only have 168 hours a week. I try to enjoy at least 160 of those hours by choosing happiness. Understanding happiness as a choice is not enough to experience and enjoy it fully. That requires an intentional decision to choose and live it.

Create Happiness

If you would like to be one of those people who always seems to be happy regardless of their situation, embrace one or more of these traits.

• Earn as close to $75,000 a year as possible. Earning any more after that will not increase your happiness.
• Do everything you can do to maintain physical health.
• Enjoy what you do for a living, as you will spend at least one-third of your life doing it.
• Be as positive a person as possible, spewing positive emotions.
• Develop strong social and community bonds.
• Develop strong family values, but learn to keep yourself first.
• Live in a safe environment.

Here are a few things I do and believe help me be forever happy and give me the power to choose happiness even at the most trying times.

Accept Negative Feelings

It’s essential because bad times will happen, and you will need to overcome them. More importantly, good times cause negative feelings almost as much as bad times, believe it or not.

Almost every time you are experiencing good times, they are later accompanied by negative feelings brought on by the thought of the great times ending.

Sometimes, the ending is scheduled, like at a party, a date, a vacation, or an event. Other times, the end of a good time is unexpected, like a relationship ending, divorce, firing, or a tragedy.

Learn to accept these negative feelings because they are as temporary as good ones. The longer you live, the more these feelings will enter and leave your existence. 

Show Gratitude

No one wants to hear “It can always be worse” or “Some people have it worse than you” when going through a wrong time. I always knew those statements were factual, but I did not understand why they would help to rub it in. 

That is where gratitude comes into play. There is always something to be grateful for. Happy people focus on the positive aspects of life rather than the negative.

Be grateful for everything in your life. Most of our problems are “First World Problems”. I just watched a YouTube video of a new Electric Vehicle review. 

They complained about how often they had to touch the display to adjust the steering wheel. I was screaming I would be happy to own the car.

I am sure people in some remote parts would see a modern Electric Vehicle as magic or an alien spaceship. Those people are probably happy living in conditions the average poor American would die if they had to live in.

No matter how bad life seems, there’s always something positive you can find to focus on, even in those conditions. You have a place to live, friends and family that care about you, clothing to wear, eyes to see, and legs to walk with.

Again, be grateful for all you have, large and small, because EVERYTHING IS TEMPORARY.

Speak it into existence. 

Affirm and believe positive thoughts. Choose happiness even when you should probably feel sad. Recite your positive thoughts in the first person as though you are forcing them to come true.

Try not to base your affirmations on miracles or fantasies, as your subconscious will have difficulty believing in them. Instead, base them on truth and your most current needs. Make them your mantra and recite them daily. If you are like me, you will slip a few miracles and fantasies in there from time to time.

Our lives are not entirely our own. We have obligations, and some have bosses to answer to. Our schedules are filled with these obligations, and there are not enough hours in the day to meet them.

Recite your mantras every day. Speak those better times and happier times into existence. Even if they don’t come true immediately, you can see and feel some of them while reciting.

Eat Healthy

Health is wealth. You can’t enjoy ANYTHING if you are not healthy. I remember reading a hospice nurse talking to her terminally ill patient. I found that people always wish they had taken better care of themselves.

I would take that as a given. It is simple, but so how, as human beings, we find a way to screw things up. Our bodies are remarkable bags of water. We know how to care for them, but almost one hundred percent of us refuse to.

If you want to be happy now, especially later in life, you must eat healthily. It is one of the best ways to feed and maintain our physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

I am eating healthily, which is one of the most POWERFUL ways to choose happiness.

Treat People Well

I teach my son that the best way to get help from people when you need it is to help them before you need it. When you help people with nothing to gain for yourself, they feel obligated to help you when you need it—sometimes before you need it.

Helping people is treating them well, and it becomes infectious in the best way possible. Nothing makes me happier than a community of people bending backward to help each other.

When you choose to treat people well, treating people how you would like to be treated, you choose happiness.

Conclusion

Happiness is a choice that requires deep intention and daily practice. With some practice, you can learn to be happy in the most trying times and enjoy the great times even more.

Don’t compare your happiness and progress with others. Enjoy EVERYTHING you have. Choose happiness.