Wednesday, 13 August 2008
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Happiness Is a Choice
One of the biggest values that hubby and I try to instill in our family is the mindset that we do have control over our feelings. We believe that joy, happiness, contentment, etc., are choices that you make, no matter what is happening at the moment. When I was growing up, I was expected to be a person of joy and happiness -- not in a "slap a smile on your face" fake kind of way, but my parents taught us, from little on up, to find opportunities in every situation and to be thankful and happy. When I was turning 10, a huge blizzard hit our area and we had to cancel my long anticipated birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. I was devastated, but my parents didn't allow me to wallow in my disappointment. Instead, they pointed out that we rarely got blizzards, and this was a once in a lifetime chance to experience it. My brother and I ended up loving being snowed in for 3 days. We walked to the local grocery store with my parents and pulled our groceries home on sleds, we jumped off of our porch roof into the snow drifts (ha, probably not the safest thing, but fun nonetheless), and my parents allowed us to "camp out" in the living room. I have so many memories from that weekend, and looking back, I am so thankful that my parents pushed me to see the best in the situation, instead of allowing me to stay cooped up in my room for 3 days, focusing on how horrible and unfair my life was.
My son, R, is only 2 1/2, but we really work with him to see the best in life and to keep the disappointments to a minimum. After all, a disappointment can only affect your life as much as you allow it to do so. For instance, if one of his toys breaks, we allow him to be sad for a brief moment, but we are thankful for the time that we had to play with it, and then focus on the other toys that we have. He isn't allowed to mope around for hours. My husband and I both tend to have an optimistic view on life, and that seems to permeate into our children, as well. We don't ignore disappointments but we don't dwell on them either. We acknowledge them and move on with life.
Recently, we decided to take a day trip to the beach with two other couples. It's a two hour drive one way and we leave early in the morning and come back late in the evening. It usually ends up being a really long, but fun day. We debated about taking R along with us, and finally decided that we would. We left our baby, A, at home with Grandma and set off for our adventure around 7 in the morning. To make a long story short, the day didn't exactly go as planned. After arriving at the beach, we unloaded the van and dragged all of our stuff out to the beach. We hadn't even been on the beach for 10 minutes, and out of no where the beautiful clear sky clouded up and began thundering, and the lifeguards made everyone clear the beach. We loaded everything back up and tried to figure out what our next step was going to be. We drove around for a little until we spotted a pavilion. We grabbed our lunch and ran to the pavilion just in time for a horrific thunder and hail storm. We huddled in the center of the pavilion, trying to stay dry and out of harms way, laughing the whole time at how our relaxing day at the beach was turning out. We stayed in the pavilion for a few hours until everything cleared and then made our way back to the beach. We only stayed for a few hours until it was time to drive home. Our 2 hour drive turned into almost 5 hours as we hit traffic, drove past accidents, rail road crossings, etc. We all talked about how the day could have been a disappointment, but instead we all had a blast. It certainly didn't turn out as we expected, but we made the best of it and have a lot of memories of our adventures. All of the others we were with commented a few times on how R dealt with all of the changes and how flexible he was. He thought the storm was exciting and didn't even seem to mind that he was only on the beach for 10 minutes before having to leave. It was one of the first times that we saw him, on his own, just go with the flow and make the decision to be happy and enjoy the day, even if it wasn't what he expected. He really was a trooper and today he has talked nonstop about how much fun he had, which makes me laugh because most kids his age would probably have hated most of the day-- lots of driving, waiting, loading, and unloading. It's rewarding when you see your children grow in values that you try to instill in them, especially when they begin to put them into their lives on their own, without reminders or pushes from you.
Do you believe that happiness can be a choice you make? What values do you focus on as a family?
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Comments (7)
Happiness is an emotion and like all of our other emotions, we get to decide when we want to be happy, mad, or sad and for how long.
When I was younger, our family focused on respect and trust. I'm sure when I have a family we will have many values, but that is a long way down the road.
Happiness is definitely a choice you can make. It is ok to be disappointed, but dwelling on it and being a grump because of it isn't going to make you or those around you any happier! I don't have any kids, but I am trying to help a few people in my life with this. Life is short, don't waste your precious moments being mad about something you can't control anyway!
Well written post, and I'm sure your children will be better for it in the long run!! How rewarding it must be for you to see him growing up into a fine young man!
I try to abide by this principle often. It doesn't always work, but it is so true that for everything that happens to us, we have the choice as to how we will react to it. It helps to remember that however crappy life seems, for the vast majority of us that live in the US our lives are so so so much better than the majority of people living in the rest of the world. That helps put things into perspective sometimes and remind me to be thankful for what we have. My brother is an inspiration to me, he had a brain tumor when he was 23 years old (10 years ago), the cancer and the chemo and radiation treatments took over several years of his life and left him with permanent hearing loss and a weaker body. But I have NEVER heard him complain or be negative, whiny, NOTHING. He is now volunteering in a children's hospital. it amazes me that he's been able to take such a horrible situation into a positive, with little visible resentment or anger.
I hope I'm able to instill in D an attitude of joy and optimism, and of gratefulness for all the good things we have in life.
I definitely agree that happiness is a choice. You choose how you respond to everything you come across. That is not to say that it is not OK to be sad, angry or something else for a time - but don't let it drag out that way. Great post!
I try to teach our kids this along with being thankful for what they have instead of always wanting more. (I struggle most with my oldest on this.) Also, respect for themselves and others and not being judgemental. All things I think are important to teach at a young age because once they get older and are 'stuck in their ways' it is much harder to change these basic things.
Happiness is a choice, the way we react to situations is our choice and ours alone. That's something I try to practice with my family as well as personal responsibility for our feelings and actions and correctly directing your anger and frustration at what is causing the problem, not at innocent bystanders.
Happiness is definitely a choice! loved this post....I am printing this out and posting it in the kitchen so everyone can read it. Don't worry, Be Happy!
This is the sort of post I needed to read this week! I agree that happiness is something we're responsible for and this really opened my eyes back up to that idea. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, it gave me plenty of food for thought.