The Big Lie About "Finding Happiness"

If it's a choice between the power of positive thinking and the myth of happiness, then I'll take the former. The power of positive thinking and griping is an oxymoron! You may define success your way, and the rest of us will choose how to define success our way, but telling people that happiness is a myth is a myth in itself!

The article was well written. There are steps we can all take to improve our lives. Our perceptions of our lives directly impacts our ability to be happy. However, it's more than just perception...there's reality....life's challenges has a way of really kicking you down and it's up to us to get up and do the best we can. There is no magic pill to make us happy...well...there are but they are temporary fixes such as cocaine....but then there's the coming down. It was nice to stumble upon this article. I have a lot of stress and anger that I must manage on a day to day basis. When I manage it, my quality of life improves and some days that's the best I can do. Happiness is something that I experience at times but it's also up to me to recognize it's happening. I become extremely angry with therapists who say things like "you just have to be positive". or anger doesn't help you. Sorry, but I have a right to feel negative and I have a right to feel anger. The challenge is making sure neither one takes over and that's the difficult part. There is nothing positive about being in debt because of divorce, not seeing your child and then paying your ex because the court mandates it. I'm in court every month. I will be in debt until I die...for what?....because I wanted to be a Dad.
The financial burden and emotional stress must be managed in order to function in society. Divorce is one of those things that is like a cancer if it goes badly....you may get a brief break emotionally due to coping but it never goes away. No one can ever convince me that it's ok I only get to see my child 4 days a month. I have anger and it's my right to feel those emotions. But I also make it a priority to cope and manage, the alternative is the anger takes over and that isn't helpful at all. Happiness isn't something everyone can get. It's a good goal to strive for though otherwise the other option is giving up....and I do that too. Sometimes I'm simply tired of coping and tired of managing and I give myself permission to feel depressed for awhile....then I get up, and try again. It's a cycle many people go through because of the stress they experience in their own lives. Nothing easy about it. In my own life, I have made it a priority not to drink alcohol. It has a negative impact on me and I know it, therefore, I made a commitment to myself not to indulge. We have power over some things...not all, but some. Those choices impact how we experience emotions. When we make good choices we feel good about ourselves. When we make bad choices, well, sometimes we blame others and that isn't justified but we think it anyway. For all of you out there fighting for stability, all I can say is it's important to find out what coping skills work for you. Me....I hate yoga....it's not going to help me. I dislike therapists....I am one....I don't need to hear more about my problems so talking about it isn't helpful either, but I have given it several tries to be fair. Distractions, thinking about something else, meditation, eating better and exercising has been helpful for me. A journal is good too because no one is going to validate your efforts....You need to tell yourself "hey, I did a good job here". It's important to notice. And when you make good choices, give yourself a reward for doing it; reinforce those positive feelings to keep working on it. Nothing easy here...I've been divorce for 6 years, I still don't get to see my child much, and I can get destructively angry if I allow myself to and there is no closure to my conflict...well...9 more years until my child is 18 so I do have a goal...sort of....anger management is my priority. Happiness is a bonus if I experience it but I'm accepting that it isn't going to be every day. I hope this helps some of you.

With all due respect Mark, I will have to disagree. The environment contributing to unhappiness must change? Yours and my generation knows little about what generations before us had to endure. I must say, humans have lost a good deal of their coping skills in the last several decades of arm chair psychoanalysis by the so called experts. Since when was living in this earthly environment a bed or roses. Not since the beginning of time, so good luck changing anything. Maybe it's our expectations that are misguided. The only ones we can change are ourselves and how we view the world as a whole. When I look at what my own mother lived through, I'm disgustingly guilty for ever complaining which she did not. Telling someone that misery is absolutely not a choice and that we do nothing to contribute to some of our own misery is just as damaging and doesn't work to provide anyone with any hope, but it certainly does remove much of the personal responsibility for our wellbeing. The things worth having are never easy. I thought that was life's purpose and lesson to begin with. Sorry, but I will never listen to anyone that tries to tell me I don't have a choice and that's something I would never, and did not teach my own children. Horrendous things have happened to hordes of people and many have risen above it to find joy in this world. You think that was just an automatic thing? I will look to those people for inspiration. We have emotions built into each and every one of us, but parking yourself in perpetual negativity becomes a habitual thought process that then is not easy to get out of because it has become a second nature habit to think and believe that way. I have a choice not to be there and as long as I believe that, no one can take that away from me. Instead of telling someone to just choose to be happy which is what you seem to take from this article, maybe telling them to adjust their view of themselves and world around them will be beneficial to their own happiness. After all, that is a definite choice, how we view ourselves and the world we live in. I choose to not make the world a totally dark place in my view of things. You choose how you want to view yourself and your world.