Does Happiness Just Happen?

I don't know. It's a good question though. Let's examine it and see if happiness just happens or not.

Evidence against the question:
1. Even lottery winners can become unhappy. Everyone has heard the stories where the winners of a lottery tell X that it was the worst thing that happened to them. Their lives fell apart, everyone treated them differently, their families collapsed. Money has a way of changing people. If you are a horrible person without money you'll be an enhanced horrible person with large sums of money that can now get out of many situations. If you are a good person with money you might still wind up a horrible person as you now have no limits to what you can do and few people to tell you differently.

2. I know some of the most miserable people around at work. They only are happy when complaining about something. I've known them for years and they have patterns that they follow like clockwork. I amuse myself in my head by saying what they are going to say before they say it. I'm convinced they are only happy when miserable because that's what they expect to happen. Their actions and their words always are negative and they will constantly find a way to bring about their misery even though in relative terms they have it pretty darn good.

3. There are always people who fall on hard times but you'd never know it by their attitudes. There are also a handful of these people at work. One guy's house burned up pretty good but not destroyed. He was the happiest person in the world before the fire, during, and after even though it would have brought many people to their collective knees. His attitude was so happy and positive that it made me wonder if he were on drugs. His house was restored, he had decent insurance for it. He was all the happier after the experience that did not destroy him but seemed to have added another layer of happiness upon his already happy countenance.

Evidence for the question:
1. I don't have any. I can't think of a real person I know or can use as an example where happiness just happened to them. You might say case three above would be an example but I'd disagree. I asked him about his happiness and he said it was an active choice he made every single moment of his life. He could be like many of his fellow coworkers and be unhappy about X but he didn't like the way they were living their lives. Being content when everything was against them was no way to live.

It seemed a fake answer to me as I asked further. How do you convince yourself to be happy I genuinely wondered? Essentially you catch yourself every single time you detect a negative attitude. No tricks, no exotic hypnotism, nothing but your own mind at work as a detector. You feel the need to complain you say a compliment instead. You feel the need to criticize you encourage instead. It's very difficult and I do my fair share of complaining at work. Usually in the mornings and it wears off during the day as I hit my happiness stride and work at it more.

It's a choice you make. Minute by minute you decide to be happy, life is too short to decide to be miserable. In the over all scheme of things it's logical to convince yourself to be happy at first and eventually you'll just be happy all the time. Here's why, you'll find yourself with the same situations no matter if you are miserable or happy. When you are happy though you'll be better able to cope with them and blow them off because in twenty years you won't even remember there was a situation.

It's also about faith. Knowing there is hope for a better world after this one is the faith every Christian shares. It really makes a lot of the world's tribulations lose their stings. Hurt yeah but perhaps to a lesser degree in the big scheme of things. Knowing that there is Divine Providence at work in everyone's life and that a sparrow does not fall from the sky without God knowing it or ordaining it is of great comfort to a believer. The old hymn Count Your Blessings is an excellent example of how to look at what is good in your life and when you do that it'll keep everything is a perspective that is accurate and not mountainous.

I'd like to think of myself as a positive person. I know I fail at that quite a bit though. After many years it's still something I have to actively do minute by minute but it's gotten me through some very tough times. Start it though and see how it works for you. Believe me you are not fooling yourself as perspective and attitude go a long way in this world and they are very real.

Your very first opportunity to say something mean or negative, immediately say something good about X. Even if everyone else go one way, be a contrarian and go the other way. Go out of your way to do something good for someone, actions speak louder than words and try to do it when no one is around so you can take credit for it. It'll do wonders for your personal happiness, I promise.

No, happiness doesn't just happen at all. It's hard but satisfying work.