Is Happiness a Choice or a Product of Circumstances?

Happiness is a state of excitement and true joy that comes from the place of satisfaction, fulfillment, gratitude, and several other things. Everyone craves happiness and wants to be happy at all times, and to attain this, there are things that need to be put in place for us to be happy. Are those things that need to be put in place related to achievements/accomplishments or all about contentment, gratitude, basically a matter of choice? In this write-up today I'll be stating my take on the sources of happiness and several other things that revolve around it, so without further ado, let's get to them one by one.

To respond to this, I must say without any atom of doubt that happiness is mostly a combination of both choice and circumstances, and that's because neither of them can work completely on their own, meaning even when you tend to show gratitude and contentment in little, you might not be genuinely happy, and if your happiness comes from achievement, if you aren't a contented individual, that happiness feeling won't last before you start craving something else. So in a nutshell, both support each other to bring about genuine happiness.

For better understanding, I'd be explaining how both work. To start with, happiness can be influenced by life conditions, such as good health, security, relationships, achievement, and the likes. In all of these we can agree that someone who has all these would feel safe, strong, and accomplished and would have little or no reason to be sad, so in light of that, happiness is ushered into their life. I can remember when I developed an illness years ago; for the years that followed, I was living in sadness of the reality of that illness. The same is the case when there are insecurities in your society or unaccomplishment in your life.

In the second part of how happiness can be influenced by mindset, in this part people tend to focus on the positives and what's working in their lives rather than let challenges put them down. Mindsets such as gratitude, contentment, optimism, acceptance, and the like are what bring about inner peace and hope for better days, which goes on to stir up excitement in such persons' lives. This kind of happiness is rare in our present work, and that's why you might see two or more people experience a loss, and while everyone is sad, you might come across one of them who seems unfazed by the loss but yet stays grateful for what they still have in the midst of loss.

In a nutshell, like I stated earlier, a combination of both is the way to go. While happiness influenced by life conditions is stirred by what happens around us, happiness influenced by mindset is brooded by what we have inside us. Happiness is not solely associated with either one of these; it's how we respond to life conditions. To live a happy life, we can view life conditions as a wind or sea waves we can't control and at the same time see our mindset as a steering wheel that we can adjust to how we want to feel, so be intentional about both today. How you do that will ultimately determine where you'll eventually go, be it a place of sadness or happiness.

All photos are mine.