Think Yourself Happy

'It is not external events themselves that cause us distress, but the way in which we think about them, our interpretation of their significance. It is our attitudes and reactions that give us trouble. We cannot choose our external circumstances, but we can always choose how we respond to them.' - Epictetus

This statement encompasses everything I have been writing about recently.

Happiness is a mindset. Things like cars or house or relationships or a job can not make us happy. What makes us happy is how we chose to utilize these things within our lives. The reason this statement is true is because as much as they can make us happy, they can also make us mad as hell as well.

So it can't be the physical item that makes us happy. It is how we choose to control or express our feelings towards these many things that determines our happiness. Yes, these physical thing can be used to elicit feelings, but ultimately we control those feelings whether good, bad or ugly.

To often we get confused and think "if I just had this or that I will be in a better mood or a better place". We can feel the pressures of society, friends or family to have the next best, greatest thing in our lives. When this happens, 9 out of 10 times we are still left with and empty hollow feeling. We end up realizing that there needs to be something more. We realize that our happiness needs to come from within ourselves

Remember when you were a little kid? You could sit inside a big box and all you had was your imagination to play with. The box was the physical thing, but your imagination was really where the fun was at. I bet if you sit back and think about that scene in your head, you will sit back and smile. This is where happiness resides. It's within you and nowhere else.