Happiness is something that everyone wants – particularly at Christmas time! Yet most of us actually do not know either where it comes from or how to get it. We are led to believe that having an ‘ideal life’, with a nice house, new car, good relationship, healthy children, successful career and lots of money will automatically bring us ongoing happiness and many of us work our whole lives to achieve these things. At Christmas we seem especially focused on our material lives as in Australia we collectively spend over $1 billion dollars on presents. The Australia Institute published data last year, however, that said Australians were spending $798 million on unwanted gifts. This is almost the entire amount of money Australians dedicate to overseas aid, in an entire year. And just as significantly, nearly four in five respondents would be happy for a donation to be made to a charity on their behalf instead of getting a present.
Perhaps this indicates that somewhere we recognize that even the best present is only exciting for a while, but then is quickly forgotten, overlooked, or just becomes normal. The capacity for a ‘thing’ to keep us happy for long is very limited. Let’s face it a DVD or an iphone or a blender is totally incapable of MAKING us happy- it’s a thing and therefore can’t make us feel anything!
We only get happy temporarily because of the meaning we put on it, whether we think that someone cares about us, we feel special or acknowledged, or we like what the present does for us, or like how we look in it, or feel good about ourselves because it adds to our life somehow. In reality this happiness comes from our own thoughts and feelings about the gift, not the gift itself.
Happiness is always an internal experience, generated inside your body and felt as a combination of feelings, thoughts and behaviours. Happiness isn’t just a feeling, because as the research shows, it also makes us more sociable, energetic, more flexible, giving and better liked by others. This state is of course generated inside you, just as everything else that you experience happens inside you. Therefore it seems illogical to try to pursue it outside in the world. People tend to spend eight hours a day working towards the goals that they think will bring them happiness, one hour a day driving to the place where they think they will achieve the goals that will bring them happiness, one hour a day eating the things that they think will make them happy, eight hours asleep dreaming of being happy….and not even one minute looking n the place were happiness actually is- inside them!
Research into happiness and well-being confirms that our circumstances only contribute to 10% of our happiness scores. That means that all those efforts to get more money, get fit, look more attractive, buy a bigger house, get the promotion, find the perfect partner, have children, take that holiday, improve your health or get the best Christmas presents will at best only increase your happiness by 10%. Anyone can see that is a huge amount of effort for a very small return. In Lyubomirsky’s model 50% of our happiness depends on our genetic default set-point, with 40% depending on our mindset. Outside the strictly psychological model it seems that the 50% set point can also change once the mind becomes clear from past programming which means that 90% of your happiness score is up to how you think and feel. The good news is that that is something you can do something about right away! It doesn’t take long to think a different thought, create a different emotion and choose to take different action. That choice is always available to you, however, sometimes it takes some training to learn how to make those choices effectively. Think of it as needing a computer technician to help you remove what is already on the hard drive of your mind, update the software and install useful positive programs.
The good news is that it is possible for everyone to achieve the happiness they desire and deserve at Christmas and every other day too. Happiness isn’t something that you can buy, find, travel to, deserve or consume. Happiness comes from living every minute in the connected experience of love, peace and gratitude.
What are you prepared to do to create yours?
