How To Be Happy When It Feels Impossible

Sometimes I feel guilty about being a generally happy person. I mean, there’s so much suffering in the world - how dare I smile and laugh and go to the beach, ya know? 

Sometimes my psyche is screaming, “People everywhere are dying from Covid! How dare you drink smoothies and go hiking and watch Netflix. Wipe that smile off your face, and fix the world already, would you?!”

But, of course, not knowing exactly how to fix the world, I'm usually left feeling snippy, exhausted, and avoidant.

Nonetheless, it can feel nobler to be miserable, like the only way to be truly *woke* is to be furious, anxious, and depressed.

Plus, it can be hard to take happy people seriously. They appear flighty, vapid, and wholly disconnected from the “real world,” a world dripping with injustice, pain, and uncertainty. Happiness, in these cases, looks more like denial than anything else.

It feels all too easy to balk at happiness as some eye-rolling-ly entitled American fixation.

So I’d like to take a moment to defend happiness, for all of you and also for myself.

Let's start with the fact that misery is easy. It’s easy to defend. It’s easy to lean into. It’s easy to commiserate about and rally around.

Happiness is hard. It’s hard to smile in the middle of a global pandemic. It’s hard to laugh when people are marching in the streets. It’s hard to enjoy the sunshine when the planet is rapidly warming. 

To maintain a demeanor of positivity and cheeriness amidst everything that's going on in the world is to engage in an oftentimes exhausting, difficult, and thankless endeavor.

And yet...

Happy people are statistically more likely to give back to their communities in charitable ways. They're also more likely to inspire happiness amongst those around them. They make better parents, better leaders, and better employees.

This means that your happiness is, in many ways, an essential prerequisite to effectively helping others. And what’s the point of helping others if not to make their lives happier, safer, and more prosperous? And if their happiness matters, doesn’t yours?

I view happiness as a choice (as opposed to some accidental side effect of being me). I choose to be happy not because it’s easier, but because it's better. For everybody. There's work to be done in this world and it's sure as shit not going to happen by me complaining to my friends, snickering at the news, and tossing and turning at night.

Happiness is hope and hope is essential.

So let's choose to be happy together, for the sake of our own well-being but, more importantly, for the well-being of the world at large.

4 practical ways you can choose happiness:

1. Foster close relationships

Studies have shown that close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives and are better predictors of long-term happiness (and health to a large degree) than social class, IQ, or genetics.

2. Practice gratitude

A “gratitude journal” (wherein you list a few things you’re grateful for each day) can be a ridiculously effective way to shift your mindset from fixating on what you don’t have to appreciating what you do. This simple mindset shift alone has the capacity to fully transform how you view the world around you.

3. Reroute your status anxiety

Status anxiety = anxiety about what others think of you; about whether you’re a success or a failure, a winner or a loser. While comparing yourself to others is an inescapable part of the human experience (and nearly impossible to overcome entirely, since you’re cognitively wired to do so), you can choose what type of comparison is worth your anxiety. Is it artistry and mastery of a craft? Spiritual enlightenment? Truth telling? Whatever it is, choose wisely. Your happiness depends on it.

4. Help others

Helping others gives life greater meaning, and, in turn, makes a person happier and more likely to keep doing it. It’s an addictive, highly rewarding cycle and one in which everyone wins.

So next time you find yourself falling down a widening hole of existential dread, try asking yourself: what’s one thing I can do today to choose happiness?