Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding.
Proverbs 3:13 NKJV
Everyone in the world wants to be happy. As a matter of fact, I believe that desire is the main thing that motivates us in most of what we do. But do we truly know what makes us genuinely happy? And is happiness just a feeling or an emotion that we search for, or is it deeper than that?
Abraham Lincoln said, “People are as happy as they make up their mind to be.” I agree. I am convinced that happiness is a choice and a habit that we can develop. First we choose happiness, and then feelings will follow. The psalmist David said, “This is the day which the Lord has brought about; we will rejoice and be glad in it” (Psalm 118:24). The statement “we will” is the deciding factor in the enjoyment of our day. If you don’t decide to be happy, there will always be something to steal your joy and poison your happiness.
Jesus told us that in the world we will have tribulation, and His suggestion was to cheer up (John 16:33). Joy gives us strength to handle the problems we do have. Sadness of any kind drains our energy and breaks our spirit. One of the best habits you can develop is the happy habit. The more happy days you experience, the more you will refuse to be unhappy. Being unhappy about anything is a waste of time and changes nothing, so why do it?
Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.
Groucho Marx
It sounds like Groucho Marx agreed with the psalmist David, who agreed with God. God wants us to be happy and to enjoy life. Jesus said that He came so that we might have and enjoy our lives abundantly (John 10:10). Will you make a decision to make Jesus happy by being happy yourself?
Another similar thought that is powerful is “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a present.”
When we focus our time and attention on things we find to be bad, we feel sad, angry, or anxious. Focusing on good things makes us feel good, excited, energized, and enthusiastic. It has been said that focusing on good things is the first law of happiness because what we focus on (think about) determines our feelings. God has given us the ability to choose happiness no matter what is going on around us. I am not suggesting that we ignore our problems, but there is a big difference between focusing on them and working to solve or resolve them.
You will never be consistently happy if you believe that happiness is determined by what is happening around you or to you. Do you believe that you can choose happiness and make it a habit? If you do, then it is time to get to work on repositioning yourself and your perspective by putting the best possible construction on everything. A negative person cannot be happy, and a persistently positive person cannot be unhappy, at least not for long.
Are you reaching for the right thing? We often think that something will make us happy if we can attain it, only to be disappointed when we reach our goal and discover we are still as unhappy as we were before. Experience teaches us that things can’t keep us happy for very long. Multitudes of people have had the experience of putting their careers ahead of everything. They work an excessive number of hours, ignoring the development of personal and family relationships, and often end up wealthy and lonely and possibly sick. They can buy anything they want but have no one to share it with, and even if they did, they wouldn’t feel good enough to enjoy it.
Good relationships and good health are two of the things that feed happiness, and they should be at the top of our list of goals.
As I have already said, our number one goal should be to develop a close, intimate, personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Being in continual fellowship with God and learning to obey Him in all things will make you happier than you might ever imagine. Since God is Life, how can we hope to enjoy life apart from Him? If people are so busy trying to climb the ladder of success that they have no time for God, they may reach the top, but they will find that their ladder has been leaning against the wrong building. They have spent their lives trying to get somewhere but find that it isn’t where they want to be after all.
In my personal search for happiness, I discovered that my joy is fed by doing things for other people. If we live to make others happy, God will bring a harvest of joy into our lives. Loving God and people is the key to daily happiness for me. No matter what kind of problem I have, if I focus on what I can do to put a smile on another person’s face, I find that it makes me happy. Psychologist Greta Palmer said, “Those only are happy who have their minds on some object other than their own happiness… On the happiness of others… On the improvement of mankind.” Regarding serving others, Jesus said, “If you know these things, blessed and happy and to be envied are you if you practice them (if you act accordingly and really do them)” (John 13:17).
Our personal beliefs can greatly affect our level of joy and happiness. We need to believe that God loves us and that we have a purpose in life. Purposeless people are frequently very unhappy as well as people who feel unloved. You are loved and God has His eye on you at all times. He has a good plan for your life and He needs you to fulfill your role in His master plan.
Do you believe that there is hope for change no matter what your current circumstances are? I have found that hopeful people are some of the happiest people in the world. Hope is powerful. Consider the following Scriptures:
Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance.
And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation.
Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us…
Romans 5:3–5a
If we will believe that our troubles are working strong character and tried integrity in us, then we can have confident hope and joy even in the midst of them. People who can remain happy no matter what their circumstances are powerful indeed.
Examine your belief system and see if some of your own beliefs are contributing to a lack of happiness in your life. Are you trusting (believing) God in all areas of life? The Bible says in Romans 15:13 that joy and peace are found in believing.
What do you believe about yourself? If you believe you are a failure, unloved, worthless, and that it is too late for you to have a good life, then you must change what you believe about you. Believe what God says about you in His Word, not what others have told you, or even how you merely feel. Change your mind and begin to believe things that will increase your joy.
Are you putting off happiness until some other time? I am personally trying to avoid saying, “I will be happy when—” and just being happy now. We fall into the trap of thinking, “I will be happy when it’s Friday and I get my paycheck and have the weekend free.” Or “I will be happy when vacation time is here,” or “when I retire and don’t have to work anymore,” or “when the kids are grown and my life is my own.” There can be a million whens that keep us from enjoying now. Make a decision not to base your happiness on some future event, and be happy today! It would be better to say, “I will enjoy vacation time when it comes, but I am happy right now.”
Learn to enjoy everyday ordinary life because that is what most of life is. We can’t base our happiness on the few special events that we have in the course of our life, because if we do, we will miss a lot of happiness. You don’t have to be happy just on Friday; you can also be happy on Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Go ahead and try it and you will find out that you can do it if you want to.
The only way we can avoid having regrets tomorrow is to make better choices about today. What will you do with today? It is yours as a gift from God, and I urge you not to waste it being sad over something that your sadness won’t change anyway.
Are you waiting for some outside force to move you to feel happy? If so, you may be waiting a long, long time. Form the habit of deciding how you will live each day, without waiting to see how you feel. The only thing to do with life is to enjoy it, and that won’t happen unless you form a habit of doing so. If you tend be sad and unhappy (which is also a habit), put some smiley faces around your house to remind you to begin your happiness journey by smiling more. If you smile, it will make you feel a tiny bit happier and you might get addicted to the feeling and want more and more.
Are you waiting for some other person in your life to change his or her behavior so you can be happy? If so, that is a huge mistake. Why should you let someone else’s choices determine your level of joy? Besides, nobody else can make you permanently happy—not your spouse, not your child, not your friend.
Melanie is a sixty-year-old woman who has been married for more than forty years. Her husband, Don, is a history professor at a small Christian college. Don has always loved history and he gets tremendous satisfaction from teaching. The Civil War is his passion, and in his free time he writes books about specific battles or key individuals of the war.
One day Melanie confided in a friend that she had been unhappy for years because Don didn’t make enough money to provide nice vacations or things that she wanted, like beautiful furnishings for the house or a great wardrobe. Most of the time when Melanie complained her friends would commiserate with her and tell her that she deserved nice things. But this particular friend said, “Melanie, Don is not responsible for your happiness. You are. Don loves his work, he isn’t interested in becoming rich, and even if he was, he’s sixty years old, so you do the math.
“If you want to be happy, you’d better figure out what you can do about it, because that isn’t Don’s job.”
It is six years later, and Melanie’s friend told me that Melanie recently wrote her a letter thanking her for showing tough love. Melanie took responsibility for her own happiness, and she said that her marriage has never been better. Not only that, but she learned that she is a playwright. She has written a play that is performed in regional theaters. She is now happy and fulfilled.
We cannot control people, and the sooner we learn that, the happier we can be. I have realized in the last couple of years that most of my “unhappy days” are caused by things other people do or don’t do. Someone might offend me or hurt my feelings. They might be making choices that are hurting them, and because I love them, their choices hurt me. Sometimes people are rude and disrespectful and that hurts me. We do get hurt and disappointed by people, but we don’t have to dwell on what they do. We can realize that they are hurting themselves more than they are hurting us and let that knowledge motivate us to pray sincerely for them rather than merely feeling sorry for ourselves and losing our joy.
Take responsibility for your own joy and happiness and never again base it on what someone else does.
Laughter is an instant vacation.
Milton Berle
When we laugh we momentarily forget all of our concerns and struggles. Laughter is wonderful! It energizes us and is one of the healthiest things we can do. Sometimes we think too much, trying to figure too many things out, and we become so intense that we forget to laugh at ourselves as well as at many other things in life.
Laughter can pull a person out of depression and despair, and it can turn an ordinary day into a memorable one. My daughter Laura and I seem to be able to laugh at almost anything. We are very different from each other in personality, but our chemistry together is hilarious. Instead of being irritated by our differences, she thinks I am hilarious and I feel that way about her. When we love people unconditionally, we can let them be themselves without being irritated by everything they do that is not the way we would do it.
I strongly urge you to find some people who make you laugh and spend more time with them. Laughter is possibly more important than you know. Dave and I try to laugh as much as we can.
God once told me that I did too much thinking. I was a pretty deep and intense person who wanted to understand all of my actions as well as every person and event in my life. My reasoning only left me confused. I wasted a lot of time trying to understand things that God wasn’t ready to explain yet. I had to get comfortable not knowing. Are you able to do that? Can you not know the answer to something and go ahead and enjoy your day, or are you like I was, deep and intense and joyless? I am grateful that God has helped me form the happy habit, and I pray you will begin right away developing yours if you have not already done so.
The average child laughs 150 times a day, while the average adult only laughs four to eight times a day. It is no wonder that God tells us in His Word that we must become like little children. Mark Twain said that our most effective weapon is laughter. You may be thinking, “Well, Joyce, you just don’t know how unhappy my life is, and if you did, you wouldn’t be telling me to laugh.” I realize there are tragic things that happen in life and certainly times when laughter would not be appropriate, but there are many things that we let make us sad when it would be better if we laughed more.
A root cause of a lot of our unhappiness is simply that we are not happy with ourselves. We are not happy with the way we look, our talents, or our level of perfection. We may compare ourselves with others instead of happily being the person that we are intended to be.
We all make mistakes, and although we want to be serious about the changes that need to be made in our lives, it is also good to learn to laugh at ourselves and not be so intense about every little mistake we make. We all have faults and are likely to have some as long as we are alive, so lighten up and don’t take yourself so seriously. Ethel Barrymore said, “You grow up the day you have the first real laugh at yourself.” Learn to enjoy yourself!
You are with yourself more than you are with anyone else, so if you can learn to enjoy your own company, it will greatly improve the quality of your life. Don’t take a daily inventory of all your faults and lament over them. Trust God to show you what needs to be changed, and work with the Holy Spirit toward those changes. I have changed a lot over the course of thirty-five years of walking with God and still have more changes to go through. I wish I had known how to enjoy myself sooner than I did while I was making the journey, but at least I can give you good advice. Being unhappy with myself didn’t make me change any faster, and it won’t help you either. I highly encourage you to enjoy every step of your journey toward spiritual maturity.
Ready or not, someday your life will come to an end. You don’t get a second chance, so be sure you live this one life that you have to the fullest. Your life is a precious gift from God, and it would be tragic if you lived it unhappy. Put the happy habit on your list of good habits to make, and as you develop it, the sad, mad habit will find no place in your life.
Having a life worth living doesn’t happen by accident; it’s something we must choose to do on purpose. I can truly say that I am a genuinely happy person, but I wasn’t that way until I made the choice to be happy.