It is equally important to investigate wellness as it is to study misery.
Sonja LyubomirskyRead
If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we'll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.
Interpretation
Happiness depends on our mindset rather than external circumstances.
This quote emphasizes the idea that happiness is not determined by the external situations we find ourselves in, but rather by our internal acceptance and actions. By recognizing that our happiness is within our control, we empower ourselves to actively seek joy and fulfillment regardless of lifeβs challenges.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth and happiness.
It is equally important to investigate wellness as it is to study misery.
Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it's not out there is that it's inside us.
People prone to joyful anticipation, skilled at obtaining pleasure from looking forward and imagining future happy events, are especially likely to be optimistic and to experience intense emotions.
The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased.
Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities.
I prefer to think of the creation or construction of happiness, because research shows that it's in our power to fashion it for ourselves.
I know not if this earth on which I stand is the core of the universe or if it is but a speck of dust lost in eternity. I know not and I care not. For I know what happiness is possible to me on earth. And my happiness needs no higher aim to vindicate it. My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose.
There are moments when people are incapable of understanding happiness.
I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.
What if in my waking hours a sound should ring through the silent halls of hearing? ... Would the bow and string tension of life snap? Would the heart over weighted with sudden joy stop beating for very excess of happiness?
If you possess happiness you possess everything: to be happy is to be in tune with God.
The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realizing that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.
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