Many of us have come to experience both sad and happy moments in our lives. These are universal emotions. Both experiences, whether satisfying or unsatisfying, can lead to either helpful or harmful effect in our everyday living. Happiness is arguably the most important and self-fulfilling feeling that everyone strives to achieve in the course of their entire life, surprisingly, for the most part, many individual seem to get only a glimpse of it. Despite the many ups and downs that characterize my life, I always ensure that I am always happy with myself and the people around me. Being happy is a decision that I made upon realizing that life problems and tribulations are not going to end anytime soon and therefore, continuing to feel sad and sorrowful at life’s predicaments leads to more harm than good in my life. Just as Schacter and Singer’s model suggests, the quality of emotion whether joy or sorrow, depends on the individual‘s cognitive appraisal of the physiological factors, I believe that being happy is a personal choice. I usually derive my happiness from my close family and friends relationships, my good health and mostly because of my personal freedom.
In addition, I also derive a substantial amount of happiness as a result of a message on a metallic paperweight gift that I received from my best friend Kittie which reads, “Five Simple Rules For Happiness: Free your heart from hatred, Free your mind from worries, live simply, give more, expect less.” However, what makes a certain individual happy may not necessarily be the cause of happiness to another person. Recently, Mister Najemy derived his own notion of happiness. He argues that the problem of happiness can largely be reduced to wealth, personal belief in regard to being in control of one’s life and knowledge (Najemy, 2011, p.47). There are some people that I perceive as not being happy such as the street families, beggars and other underprivileged people in our society, they usually tend to dwell so much on their shortcomings and forget to smile and be happy. It is my view that these people should start to view life at an optimistic angle and ultimately be happy with the little life offers them.
One of the major constructive suggestions that I would give to my friends and the people that I know is to always strive to be themselves if they desire to be happy in life. Every day, some people wish that they looked like or acted like some other specific people, or probably wishing that they had that lovely job or great life being lived by someone else. However, until an individual learns to love whom they are and work on improving themselves, they will never grow as persons or be happy with whatever they do or what they have. I would advice my friends to be confident with whom they are since that is the first step to happiness. To achieve this, I would request them to write down a list of the things that they love about themselves, whether it is their free spirit, their shiny hair, work ethics or how they speak. Another constructive suggestion that I would give is to stress on the importance of recognizing ones flaws especially by welcoming constructive criticism.
This is essential in their endeavor to improving their flaws and consequently contributing to their happiness. While giving my suggestions, I would not forget to remind them that they should always be grateful with whatever they have or for being whom they are. Just like the decision that I made in regard to being happy, they should also cease from being obsessed with their flaws and with the things that they badly want to change since, things will most probably not work as perfectly as we would wish them to and therefore they should appreciate, love and be happy with their lives.
References
Najemy, R. E. (2011). The psychology of happiness: Understanding ourselves and others.
Worcester, Mass: Holistic Harmony Publishers.
