Happiness Myths

(Excerpt from The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky)

Myth 1: Happiness must be found. The first myth is that happiness is something that we must find, that it’s out
there somewhere, a place beyond our reach, a kind of Shangri-La. We could there, yes, but only if the right things
would come to pass: if we’d marry our true love, secure our dream job, or purchase an elegant house. Don’t be the
person who is waiting for this, that, or those other things to happen before you can be happy. If you’re not happy
today, then you won’t be happy tomorrow unless you take things into your own hand and take action. Happiness is
not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us. As banal and cliched as this might
sound, happiness, more than anything, is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the
world in which we reside. So, if you want to be happy tomorrow, the day after, and for the rest of your life, you can
do it by choosing to change and manage your state of mind.
Myth 2: Happiness Lies in Changing our Circumstances. Another big fallacy is the notion that if only something
about the circumstances of our lives would change, then we would be happy. This kind of thinking is what I call “I
would be happy IF _______” or “I will be happy WHEN ______”. This logic is shared by some of us who remember
periods in our lives when we experienced real happiness but think that we could never recapture the exact
circumstances that brought this real happiness about. The reality is that the elements that determined our
happiness in past, and can make for future happiness, are with us right now and are right here waiting to be taken
advantage of. Changes in our circumstances, no matter how positive and stunning, actually have little bearing on our
well-being.
Myth 3: You either have it or you don’t. One day my brother, who’s an electrical engineer, told me that he had
read an article about Buddhist monks who taught themselves to be happy through meditation. “What a new
concept!” he exclaimed. “I never thought you could teach yourself to be happy. I thought you either have it or you
don’t”. This notion- that we are born happy or unhappy-is ubiquitous. Many of us, especially those of us who are not
very happy, believe that our unhappiness is genetic and there’s really nothing we can do about it. To the contrary,
growing research demonstrates that we can overcome our genetic programming.