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Gor Akopyan

Mrs. Ditch

English 115

September 16, 2018

Understanding Happiness and How to Achieve It

A lot of people can tell you that happiness is the state of being happy, but the definition

alone doesn’t help people understand what happiness truly means and how to achieve it.

Happiness can be seen to occur in two cases, internally and externally. Internal happiness is a

mental battle that a person needs to fight in order to be happy while external happiness is a more

physical one. Authors such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, David Brooks,

Graham Hill and Sonja Lyubomirsky all write about happiness and why some people are having

trouble maintaining happy. The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler, David Brooks and Sonja

Lyubomirsky all focus on the internal space while Graham Hill focuses on the external space.

The Dalai Lama and Cutler argue that happiness is all a mental transformation that has nothing to

do with physical circumstance such as injury, while Brooks argues that happiness is determined

by how people come out of a bad time where they suffer and turn that into a transformation

instead of a burden. Lyubomirsky argues that some portion of a person's happiness is

predetermined, but a large portion of it is still up to a person's intentional activities to transform

their internal space. The last author, Hill, argues that people focus to much on what they own

physically which leads to them becoming upset at what they do not have instead of focusing on

the more important things which enable them to transform the external space.

An argument that focuses on the internal space of happiness comes from The Dalai Lama

and Cutler where they demonstrate how external events should not corelate to happiness. They
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argue that happiness more than anything is an emotion that is controlled mentally and by how

people think rather than what they do. This contradicts how many people believe that if they

want to become happier in life they must do things or buy things that they think will make them

happier. Cutler goes on to say that “Happiness is determined more by one’s state of mind than by

external events” (22). He says this as he brings up personal examples of people he has known

who have been dealt with a bad experience in life and remained happy throughout it. A specific

example he brought up was a person he knew who got diagnosed with HIV, but they maintained

a calm mental throughout the process, allowing them to maintain being happy through a serious

issue in their life. This goes to prove The Dalai Lama and Cutlers idea on how happiness is more

internal and focused on the mind then by what happens to a person physically. Another example

Cutler brings up, is actor Christopher Reeve who was left with a spinal cord injury that left him

completely paralyzed from the neck down. Even though he suffered such a tragedy to his life, he

maintained a state of happiness by focusing on him being lucky to be alive than unfortunate

about the accident.

Brooks also focuses on the internal space; however, his argument is centered around the

state of suffering that all people feel. Many people find themselves at a point in their live where

they have just experienced a traumatic event that causes them to suffer. Suffering is a state that

many people would consider to make a person unhappy because of all the depressing emotions

that occur at such difficult times. In addition to the state of suffering, Brooks points out that the

way people deal with and rebound after suffering is an important factor to being happy. The

main idea that he highlights is that “Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a

disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different” (286). People get back to

being the same person after a sickness, but with suffering, Brooks argues that it changes the way
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they think afterwards. After a traumatic event a person usually goes through a great deal of pain

and through that pain they change the way they perceive the world. The type of change that

occurs is what is important because many people can go through many hardships and get weaker,

but what is important is to get stronger than you originally were. Brooks mentions Franklin

Roosevelt who is a famous United State president that exemplifies such a change for the better

when he got polio. The pain that comes from such a ailment like polio is insurmountable in most

cases, but for President Roosevelt it made him come back stronger than he had been initially.

On the external space side, Graham Hill argues that people have trouble reaching

happiness because they focus on the wrong elements of life to improve. Hill was a person who

got lucky early on and made a lot of money which let him afford many luxurious purchases. As

he went through life with all these physical belongings he kept finding that obtaining new things

only made them mean less to him and make him unhappy with himself. Having too much made

his life complicated and even though they were bought to make him happier, they did the

opposite. Going through life like this made Hill realize that all of these physical things and big

houses are not what brings happiness to a person. It wasn’t until he had less that he said “I have

less-and enjoy more. My space is small. My life is big.” (312). All of the luxuries he had were

never his ticket to happiness, but instead his happiness came from the things that he cared about

the most. Having a big house does not mean a happy life, it can make it more complicated and

lead to having things that add no meaning to life at all. The transformation of the external space

is to be done not by meaningless belongings, but rather finding the meaning in the life you

already have. Everyone idealizes that glamorous life of being able to obtain anything they desire,

but that life only ends up consuming them, forcing them to be unhappy with themselves as they

centered their life around material goods which give nothing to a person’s life. Hill highlights
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this type of mistake as he experienced the same thing, but now he is happy ever since he got rid

of all of the useless things he never needed.

Shifting back into the focus on internal space, Lyubomirsky believes that happiness is in

the hands of the person who wants it, meaning they have to take the steps to achieve it. As

Lyubomirsky see’s it, a good portion of happiness is set upon birth by genetics, but what is

important is that there is another big portion left for the individual themselves. The key to

becoming happy is having the mental ability to accept the actions that are required to contribute

to an individual’s overall happiness. A lot of people go on to believe that they are unhappy

because of the circumstance they are in and that they have no say to fix it. This however, is not

true at all since circumstance is only ten percent of a person total happiness. These people are

doing the opposite of what is beneficial to them to become happy as they do not try and become

happy, instead they just sit there and blame it on what already exists. Lyubomirsky says that

“Happiness, more than anything, is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching

ourselves and the world in which we reside” (185). In this case happiness is mental, but it is also

the mental ability to understand how to approach their lives to become a happier person. For the

most part happiness is internal in the sense that it is all about a person’s mentality, but it is also

how that person approaches their lives which contributes to the mentality. People can not be a

victim to themselves in terms of happiness and to not be a victim requires the ability to

understand that more can be intentionally done to transform the internal space that contributes to

happiness then what they are doing currently.

Happiness is a sensation that can be influenced from both the internal and external space.

It is important to know all of the ways and things that can influence happiness, as it will only

help achieve it better. Both Brooks, The Dalai Lama and Cutler provide arguments that surround
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the idea that happiness comes by focusing on the mental idea of it. Things can go badly for

someone physically or emotionally, but they need to keep a strong mentality and focus on what

is really important to stay happy. Hill shows how physical objects can be more of a hinderance

on happiness then they can be a help to it. Finally, Lyubomirsky focuses on the idea that

happiness more or less is mainly about a person’s intentional actions even though a part of it can

be genetic. Ultimately, everyone wants to be happy and will do anything to become happy, but

the important thing is realizing that to achieve happiness one must first have a strong mind and

be content with themselves.


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Works Cited

Cutler, Howard and The Dalai Lama. “The Source of Happiness”, Pursuing Happiness,

Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, 21-32

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does”, Pursuing Happiness, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, 284-

287

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less”, Pursuing Happiness, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016,

308-312

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why”, Pursuing Happiness, Bedford/St.

Martin’s, 2016, 179-196

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