How To Be Gay and Happy - A Psychotherapist Explains: Live the Life You Were Born to Live and Feel Good About Yourself by Field Peter

Author:Field, Peter [Field, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rainbow Champions
Published: 2016-02-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight: On the Road to Happiness

“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”

~ Dalai Lama XIV

Let’s begin this chapter with a simple question: if your goal is to be happy, how will you know when you’ve achieved it? If you awoke tomorrow and things had changed and you knew you were happy, what would be different? What would tell you that you were happy?

And now for the biggie: what steps do you need to take to make this happen?

We will be looking at these important questions, at what it takes to be happy — and strategies we gay people can use to help accomplish this — much more closely in this chapter. But before we begin our discussion on happiness, we first need to decide just what it is we are talking about. Let’s look a little closer at what this thing we call happiness really is, this thing so many gay people want, but somehow seldom seem to have enough of.

In this chapter, we’ll see that happiness is a state of mind, one of contentment and wellbeing, which allows us to feel relatively secure and unworried. We’ll see that happiness is an attitude rather than an occasion, a verb rather than a noun. It is something we do much more than something we are. And we’ll look at how you can ‘do’ more of it — at how you can bring more real happiness into your life.

Happiness Is an Art — But Also a Science

No matter our sexual orientation, no matter our past, no matter our genetic make-up, it is possible to achieve deep, enduring happiness. And what is more, as LGBTIQ people and as human beings, we are entitled to it.

The truth is, we have far more power over our own happiness than most of us realize. Research conducted by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, offers scientific evidence to support this. In each of us, some of our happiness level is inborn. It’s true: some people are just born happier, and they have an innate tendency to find the sunny side of things. This inborn level of happiness accounts for about fifty percent of our happiness ranking.

Lyubomirsky and her team of researchers also discovered that ten percent of happiness comes from circumstances: a good marriage, good health, food on the table, a job that we enjoy. But overall the rich are no happier than those earning much less. Of course, enormous stressors like poverty, homelessness, and abusive relationships can be massive barriers to happiness, but as long as people are safe and earning enough to cover basic living expenses, the research shows that their happiness level does not fluctuate with income level.

Paradoxically perhaps, being in a fulfilling relationship or working at a job you enjoy are great gifts, but these things only account for a relatively small percentage of overall happiness .

If approximately fifty percent of our happiness level is predetermined at birth, and ten percent is dictated by circumstances, we are left with about forty percent.

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