Happiness depends more on you than on what happens to you
People tend to think their happiness or sadness depends on what happens to them.
Sunny day, happy.
Rainy day, sad.
Good luck, bad luck.
That way, life ends up feeling like a lottery. And yeah, of course, you can work to tip the odds in your favor. Make an effort, improve your chances, try to make things go well.
Almost everyone agrees up to that point.
But I have another theory. And as the years go by, I’m more and more sure of it.
It’s not so much the events. It’s you.
You decide your mood. Your expectations, your biases, the story you tell yourself in your head.
It sounds stupid. It kind of is.
But I genuinely think your attitude toward life matters more than what happens to you.
There are deeply unhappy people surrounded by good things. And people life has beaten down without mercy, smiling like a kid.
I went through a period when my life was shit. Maybe from the outside it didn’t look that bad, but inside it was torture.
One of those times when suicide stops being an abstract idea and becomes another option. A possible way out.
And yet, one day everything changed. I went from my lowest point to the greatest personal growth I’ve ever experienced.
Nothing special happened.
I just got tired of being unhappy. And somehow, I managed to change the way I looked at my days.
I remember the “click” perfectly. I remember trying to explain it to a friend and, hearing myself talk, thinking: I sound like a crazy person.
The events hadn’t changed. My external life was pretty much the same.
But I was learning to be happier.
That’s why I think happiness, to a large extent, is learned. Just like unhappiness is learned.
Of course, some blows knock you down. Grief, loss, hard hits.
But there are all the other days too.
And it really stands out to me how little people focus on learning to be happy.
A lot of people wait for happiness as if it’s something that happens to you.
When really, it’s something you train for. Something you work on. Something deeply personal.
