A long time ago, I heard a quote that has stuck with me.  I can’t remember who said it, so there’s no way for me to give credit, but I’ve never forgotten it.  It goes like this:  “Cheerful is a choice.”

This has meant a lot to me over the years, as I went to work feeling gnarly or grumpy, and just wishing that the world would go away.  I would remember that I had a choice in how I greeted the people in my life, and that being cheerful, putting on a smile, and being courteous was a CHOICE.  I found that I could do it by choosing to do so, and then, by doing it, somehow, I actually did feel better.

This principle, that we have control over our feelings, our actions, and our internal states, is a crucial one to understand, if we are to have the lives that we desire.  No matter what life has thrown at us, we can still choose to respond in this way, or in that way.  Which way we choose will have a profound affect on not only our internal state, but on how the rest of our outer world is also.

Unfortunately, we are not taught this in school, or even in our culture.  Many of us are floundering around at the mercy of random events, feeling out of control, frustrated, and miserable, because our lives just haven’t turned out as expected.  We were never taught to cultivate an anchor of personal happiness that comes from controlling ourselves within.  We were never taught How To Be Happy .
Learning how to have internal control is a real skill, and can be learned. It is not the same as taking some pill, or slapping on a temporary bandage, or deadening the pain temporarily with a drug, or even with some activity that acts like the placebo effect . We can, if we decide to learn how, begin to control our lives on the outside, by controlling our lives on the inside.