How to Create Your Own Happiness - 1

How to Create Your Own Happiness - 1


WHO DECIDES WHETHER you shall be happy or unhappy?

The answer—you do!

A television celebrity had as a guest on his program an aged man. And he was a very rare old man indeed. His remarks were entirely unpremeditated and of course absolutely unrehearsed. They simply bubbled up out of a personality that was radiant and happy. And whenever he said anything, it was so naive, so apt, that the audience roared with laughter. They loved him. The celebrity was impressed, and enjoyed it with the others.


Finally he asked the old man why he was so happy. "You must have a wonderful secret of happiness," he suggested.


"No," replied the old man, "I haven’t any great secret".


"It’s just as plain as the nose on your face. When I get up in the morning," he explained, "I have two choices—either to be happy or to be unhappy, and what do you think I do? I just choose to be happy, and that’s all there is to it." That may seem an versimplification, and it may appear that the old man was superficial, but I recall that Abraham Lincoln, whom nobody could accuse of being superficial, said that people were just about as happy as they made up their minds to be. You can be unhappy if you want to be. It is the easiest thing in the world to accomplish. Just choose unhappiness. Go around telling yourself that things aren’t going well, that nothing is satisfactory, and you can be quite sure of being unhappy. But say to yourself, "Things are going nicely. Life is good. I choose happiness," and you can be quite certain of having your choice.


Children are more expert in happiness than adults. The adult who can carry the spirit of a child into middle and old age is a genius, for he will preserve the truly happy spirit with which God endowed the young. The subtlety of Jesus Christ is remarkable, for He tells us that the way to live in this world is to have the childlike heart and mind. In other words, never get old or dull or jaded in spirit. Don’t become super-sophisticated.


My little daughter Elizabeth, aged nine, has the answer to happiness. One day I asked her, "Are you happy, honey?"

"Sure I’m happy," she replied. "Are you always happy?" I asked. "Sure," she answered, "I’m always happy." "What makes you happy?" I asked her. "Why, I don’t know," she said, "I’m just happy." "There must be something that makes you happy," I urged.


"Well," she said, "I’ll tell you what it is. My playmates, they make me happy. I like them. My school makes me happy. I like to go to school. (I didn’t say anything, but she never got that from me.) I like my teachers. And I like to go to church. I like Sunday school and my Sunday-school teacher. I love my sister Margaret and my brother John. I love my mother and father. They take care of me when I’m sick, and they love me and are good to me."


That is Elizabeth’s formula for happiness, and it seems to me that it’s all there—her playmates (that’s her associates), her school (the place where she works), her church and Sunday school (where she worships), her sister, brother, mother, and father (that means the home circle where love is found). There you have happiness in a nutshell, and the happiest time of your life is in relation to those factors.


A group of boys and girls were asked to list the things that made them happiest. Their answers were rather touching. Here is the boys’ list: "A swallow flying; looking into deep, clear water; water being cut at the bow of a boat; a fast train rushing; a builder’s crane lifting something heavy; my dog’s eyes."


And here is what the girls said made them happy:


"Street lights on the river; red roofs in the trees; smoke rising from a chimney; red velvet; the moon in the clouds." There is something in the beautiful essence of the universe that is expressed, though only half-articulated, by these things. To become a happy person have a clean soul, eyes that see romance in the commonplace, a child’s heart, and spiritual simplicity.


Many of us manufacture our own unhappiness. Of course not all unhappiness is self-created, for social conditions are responsible for not a few of our woes. Yet it is a tact that to a large extent by our thoughts and attitudes we distill out of the ingredients of life either happiness or unhappiness for ourselves.


"Four people out of five are not so happy as they can be," declares an eminent authority, and he adds, "Unhappiness is the most common state of mind." Whether human happiness strikes as low a level as this, I would hesitate to say, but I do find more people living unhappy lives than I would care to compute. Since a fundamental desire of every human being is for that state of existence called happiness, something should be done about it. Happiness is achievable and the process for obtaining it is not complicated. Anyone who desires it, who wills it, and who learns and applies the right formula may become a happy person. In a railroad dining car I sat across from a husband and wife, strangers to me. The lady was expensively dressed, as the furs, diamonds, and costume which she wore indicated. But she was having a most unpleasant time with herself. Rather loudly she proclaimed that the car was dingy and drafty, the service abominable, and the food most unpalatable. She complained and fretted about everything.


Her husband, on the contrary, was a genial, affable, easy-going man who obviously had the capacity to take things as they came. I thought he seemed a bit embarrassed by his wife’s critical attitude and somewhat disappointed, too, as he was taking her on this trip for pleasure.


To change the conversation he asked what business I was in, and then said that he was a lawyer. Then he made a big mistake, for with a grin he added, "My wife is in the manufacturing business."


This was surprising, for she did not seem to be the industrial or executive type, so I asked, "What does she manufacture?"


"Unhappiness," he replied. "She manufactures her own unhappiness."


Despite the icy coolness that settled upon the table following this ill-advised observation, I was grateful for his remark, for it describes exactly what so many people do—"They manufacture their own unhappiness."


It is a pity, too, for there are so many problems created by life itself that dilute our happiness that it is indeed most foolish to distill further unhappiness within your own mind. How foolish to manufacture personal unhappiness to add to all the other difficulties over which you have little or no control!


Rather than to emphasize the manner in which people manufacture their own unhappiness, let us proceed to the formula for putting an end to this misery-producing process. Suffice it to say that we manufacture our unhappiness by thinking unhappy thoughts, by the attitudes which we habitually take, such as the
negative feeling that everything is going to turn out badly, or that other people
are getting what they do not deserve and we are failing to get what we do deserve.


Our unhappiness is further distilled by saturating the consciousness with feelings of resentment, ill will, and hate. The unhappiness-producing process always makes important use of the ingredients of fear and worry. Each of these matters is dealt with elsewhere in this book. We merely want to make the point at the present time and stress it forcefully that a very large proportion of the unhappiness of the average individual is self-manufactured. How, then, may we proceed to produce not unhappiness but happiness?

(From Power Of Positive Thinking by Norman V Peale)