The Most Important Thing to Know about Happiness
Happiness hijackers
We’ve all had the experience of having our happiness hijacked – a time when something outside of us caused the good mood we were in to completely tank.
For example, you can probably recall a time when you were in a peaceful, content mood – just minding your own business – and then another person came into your view and said or did something that was anywhere from disappointing to despicable. You were feeling just fine until this person showed up and said or did the thing that was inappropriate. The encounter stole your peace and left you feeling irritated, if not angry.
Experiences like this – with the potential to hijack our emotional well-being – can happen on a regular basis, in big ways or small: our partner does not clean up the kitchen like he promised; our airline flight is canceled; we see something on the news that is disturbing; our best friend has learned she has cancer.
What these experiences all have in common is: an outside circumstance – over which we have no control – has diminished our day. With each such experience and without consciously realizing it, we become subtly programmed to believe that happiness is haphazard and elusive. Over time, we may give up hope that happiness is truly possible; we resign ourselves to and brace ourselves for a scary and uncertain life, where we are buffeted about by all the ups and downs.
True cause of diminished happiness
I have excellent news. Outside circumstances can’t hijack your happiness unless you allow them to. Your happiness is completely within your control!
Most of us operate from the mistaken premise that we feel the way we feel because of what is going on around us. In other words, we mistakenly believe that our mood and attitude is caused by our circumstances. To take one of the examples from above: “my airline flight is canceled; now I have to wait hours for the next one, and because of the canceled flight, I am discouraged and angry.” What’s important to know is that it’s not the canceled flight that has caused the discouragement.
So if the way we feel is not caused by the circumstances we’re in, what causes our feelings? Let me introduce the concept of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to answer that question. CBT, pioneered by Dr. Aaron Beck, helps us understand the connection between thoughts and feelings, and how thoughts and feelings influence behavior.
In the visual below, you’ll see there are four distinct components in the experiences we have: circumstances, thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
The first component is the circumstance itself. Something happens. Circumstances are just the facts of the situation and are usually out of our control and not something that can be easily changed (e.g., the flight was cancelled).
The next element that occurs is that we have a thought or two or more about that circumstance. Thoughts present themselves to us all the time. They’re constantly changing and are not necessarily true. We have approximately 60,000 of them per day, making our brain a very busy place.
The third component in this chain is that we have a feeling (emotion) in response to our thought about the circumstance. Note that all feelings are caused by thoughts. Feelings are vibrations in our bodies that can be described in just one word. Examples of emotions include joy, enthusiasm, optimism, contentment, pessimism, overwhelment, doubt, blame, anger, rage, unworthiness, fear, etc.
The fourth component that occurs is our behavior. It’s important to know that our behavior is fueled by our feelings. The “way we feel” causes our actions, inactions and reactions.
It works like this: at the onset of a potential happiness-hijacking event (or the moment we find ourselves in the middle of a situation that we don’t like), we have the ability to step into our personal power to control the one thing that we can, which is ourselves. We have the ability to understand and manage our thoughts and guide ourselves to the best-feeling place that we can. And from that better-feeling state, our best and most productive behavior is inspired, which ultimately beneficially impacts that troublesome situation.
The most important thing to know
Because we live in a world full of other people and outside circumstances that we can’t control, it’s a given that we will sometimes find ourselves facing events with the potential to hijack our happiness and well-being. But letting our happiness be hijacked is just one option. Another option is to embrace the fact that we each have a point of personal power in any situation, and we can harness that power to manage our own well-being and guide ourselves to the most beneficial outcome possible.
In my next blog post, How to Unlock Your Power to Improve Any Situation, I will expand on this concept by sharing advice for accessing and leveraging THE POINT OF PERSONAL POWER that exists in all of our experiences.
In the meantime, please let the idea that you have agency over your happiness ruminate in your being and bring you a sense of peace and hope. Your happiness is 100% possible because it is within your control. 😊
If you’ve been consciously or unconsciously operating from the premise that certain situations and/or people will need to change before you can truly be happy, you can see you have been in a no-win situation (since you have no control over those people and situations). Hopefully you feel some relief knowing you can “give up” that unrealistic expectation and can be truly happy through your own volition.
Instead, you can approach problematic situations/people with calmness and confidence. You can learn how to reframe difficult experiences so they don’t hijack your good-feeling emotions and ultimately create the satisfying life you seek.
The most important thing to know about happiness and your emotional well-being? It is completely within your control. It is never too late to find this out and to live a life that feels good!