HAPPINESS IS A CHOICE- SO CHOOSE IT.

Always choose to be happy

             Source: Bing

What is Happiness?

You have probably read thousands of articles telling you how to live a happy life and how to find happiness and what can I say, most of them are right. We all want to be happy, to wake up to life of definite purpose and feel fulfilled in what we do. Isn't that what life is supposed to be anyway. But happiness is not something definite but rather subjective, changing from person to person.

There are many definitions of happiness all over the place but the one thing that is synonymous with all these definitions is that happiness is feeling of content and fulfillment in life.  Truth be told, we are not always going to be happy in in life, why? Because life is like a Ferris wheel; one second it’s up and the other it’s all going downhill very quickly so it's up to you whether you are going to grumble the whole ride or enjoy it.

Bluntly speaking, happiness is a choice. It is much easier to wait for something positive to happen in your life to be happy and the downside to that will be that you would always live in a limbo, never knowing when your next going to experience happiness. You could on the other hand, decide to look for a silver lining in a cloud and even if you can't bluntly see one, you continue searching till you find one.

It sounds likes a lot of work to be responsible for your own happiness and it is. You must choose always to be happy even when the last thing you want to do in the world is smile yet you should smile because they are a million people out there who would kill to have the life that you are living.

Honestly speaking, it took me a long time to realize that happiness is a choice. I always relied on outside sources for my happiness; friends, family, television, music, novels even studies. Anything, anything that would distract me from how sad my life was. I would always laugh on the outside to distract myself from the sadness that was on the inside.

It was after I decided to stop running from the obvious and decided to do something about it. I started making decisions that made me feel more fulfilled and content about my life and I found myself enjoying my days more and more. It was not easy I will tell you that, I had to go against my feelings, change routines and my mindset but it was all worth it.

Happiness is not something definite but rather subjective, changing from person to person.

HOW OUR CHOICES MAKE OR BREAK US?

If you want to be truly happy, you have to make the decision to be.  Most times we will blame everyone and everything for our misery except ourselves.

We blame our partners for our troubled relationships and blame our bosses for our misery at work and even blame the weather for our foul mood. But until a person realizes playing the blame game only affects the accuser, the days of mundane living are far from over.

The only way a human being can control a situation is by making a decision about it. I have expounded on two factors that heavily affect human beings and their happiness and how our choices influence the direction they go.

RELATIONSHIPS.

Human beings are naturally interpersonal creatures. Recent studies have found that loneliness is as lethal as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and one way of achieving happiness is having meaningful relationships.

However, relationships especially healthy ones do not happen overnight. They take a lot of time, effort and trust to build from either party. So it is up to a person whether they are going to invest the necessary time and effort to build such a relationship or leave it on its own hoping it will survive and even thrive.

We choose the amount of time we spend with our family and friends. We also choose the kind of friends we have and the type of energy we want around ourselves.  Negative energy from the surrounding people is inevitably going to drain and drag us down so if a person desires happiness, they would put an ocean between themselves and negative energy. 

It may be difficult to let go of some relationships because of how long they have lasted or how close they are to us but at the end of the day, you are the feeling sad and depressed.  If you adequately communicate your feelings and explain to a person how their actions are affecting you but you still fail to find a middle ground. It may be high time to move on.

CAREER

A person’s path of career is without doubt one of the biggest decisions that they have to make as a human being. It is how a person is going to contribute to society and where they are going to spend their time most until retirement. The average person will spend over  90,000 hours at work, that is a third of a lifetime. If I am spending such a huge chunk of my life at work, I might as well do spend it doing something I love.

The matter of fact is that most people choose a career for the money and not the happiness. The result of this is that they spend forty-something years of their life in utter misery and desolation. Those who realize that they need a change of career are too afraid to plunge into the unknown, so they continue with their mundane lives.

Of the 1 billion human beings that work in offices, 85% of people hate their jobs. Now you could be among the 85% that dread going to work or you could be among the 15% that derive satisfaction and fulfillment from their work. The choice is really yours.

Of course choosing a career that you want can be daunting and even terrifying if the said field is very narrow in terms of employment opportunities. But life is a game of chance; you have to be willing to take a leap into the unknown. I mean that is the only way you will ever know.

Personally, every career that was suggested to me was either mundane or too challenging. I am not ashamed to say that I didn’t know what I wanted but I knew I didn’t want to be a lawyer or an accountant or an economist or even a politician. Nothing spoke to me. Until one day it dawned on me that I was not meant for a one-career path, I was meant to do many things in my life because I hate monotony.

To be honest, the careers I desire are not the most secure, but they hold the one thing others didn’t have and that is happiness and purpose to me.

For all those reading and you have no idea what career you want. It is okay to have no idea but the mistake you should never make is give up on the search.

Here are some of the ways that I found my career choices:

Career tests.

These are great in narrowing down what careers you would be good at according to your interests and talents.

A great career test site is Truity.com

Personality tests.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of knowing your personality type.  With this knowledge, you know which careers would be disastrous with your personality and which ones would be a great match.

I recommend 16 personalities for a personality test because of how comprehensive their information is.

Other ways to find a right career choice is to: 

-Make a list of all the career options.

-Have a mentor

-Research about the different occupations.

CHOOSING TO BE HAPPY.

Choices can sometimes be the hardest things we have to do, but we still have to make to do. Sometimes we make choices and our worlds turn themselves over and other times our worlds are brought to order. 

Pursuing and finding happiness is not a walk in the park. It takes time, dedication and effort. The first step is to take action. You cannot surrender your happiness to the hands of fate but rather you must take charge and make conscious decisions that are going to change your life for better.

I found the tips and ways on how to lead a happier life well explained here with accuracy and what's more , they are easy to remember.

Always remember that nothing worth having is easy to get so you must work hard and take control if you want to live a more fulfilling life. 

IDENTIFYING WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY.

As strange as it sounds, there are people out there who don't know what makes them happy. I know I didn't.

I thought I knew what made happy, but I was mistaking pleasure and fun with happiness. Happiness is supposed to leave you content and fulfilled not a huge rush of emotions that lasts a short time. 

Identifying what makes you happy is not going to take only a day. It could take weeks or even months but the effort is worth it.

The most obvious way to know what makes you happy is to write down how you felt at the end of each day. A scale of 1 to 10 would work just fine; 10 standing for happiest and 1 standing for in happiest. After that you note down the things you did that day and after a while you will pick up a pattern.

I recommend checking out this website more information on ways of identifying what makes you happy.

All in all, life is about making the most of the small things. I haven't yet fully found my happiness but each day I get closer to my aim.