Is Happiness a Choice?

An interesting synchronicity just occurred. I have been reading a most fascinating and inspirational book, “My Stroke of Insight” by brain scientist and stroke survivor Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D.

Look what Jill writes on pages 171-172 concerning this very subject:

“Personally, I really like the way happy feels inside my body and therefore choose to hook into that circuitry on a regular basis. I’ve often wondered, If it’s a choice, then why would anyone choose anything other than happiness? I can only speculate, but my guess is that many of us simply do not realize that we have a choice and therefore don’t exercise our ability to choose. Before my stroke, I thought I was a product of my brain and had no idea that I had some say about how I responded to the emotions surging through me. On an intellectual level, I realized that I could monitor and shift my cognitive thoughts, but it never dawned on me that I had some say in how I perceived my emotions. No one told me that it only took 90 seconds for my biochemistry to capture, and then release me. What an enormous difference this awareness has made in how I live my life.

“Another reason many of us may not choose happiness is because when we feel intense negative emotions like anger, jealousy, or frustration, we are actively running complex circuitry in our brain that feels so familiar that we feel strong and powerful. I have known people who consciously choose to exercise their anger circuitry on a regualr basis simply because it helps them remember what it feels like to be themselves.

“It is just as easy for me to habitually run the happiness circuit as it is for me to run the anger circuit. In fact, from a biological perspective, happiness is the natural state of being for my right mind. As such, this circuitry is constntly running and is always available for me to tap into. My anger circuit, on the other hand, does not always run, but can be triggered when I experience some sort of threat. As soon as the physiological response has passed out of my blood stream, I can resume my joy.”

Wow – well, I couldn't have said it any better myself! How interesting that I was pondering this – and along came this wonderful validation! Incidentally, when Jill Bolte Taylor writes about her “right mind” – she is not referring to her sanity, but to the right hemisphere of her brain – the qualities of which she became intimately acquainted with when the stroke she suffered nullified a large part of her left hemisphere. The areas of her left hemisphere that she lost were responsible for language, mathematics, critical thinking and the identification of boundaries. The right mind has much to do with intuition, Oneness, joy and well-being.

Another interesting synchronicity. Yesterday, I asked my wife the question, “Is Happiness a Choice?” Well, after replying, “Yes, of course,” she pointed out that she had just seen in the paper earlier that day an article about the actor Michael J. Fox, and a new documentary special to do with the subject, “Is Happiness a Choice?”

Well, I searched the net just now and found an article at Entertainment Weekly that said the doc is called “Michael J. Fox: Adventures of an Incurable Optimist” and it will air on ABC television on May 7, 2009.

Regarding the doc, the article went on to say:

Echoing his [latest] book — a follow-up to 2002's Lucky Man — the Parkinson's patient-turned-activist will examine the nature of hope, traveling everywhere from President Obama's inauguration to Bhutan, and interviewing everyone from celebrities to monks. (Take that, John Stossel!) ''The special came together before [the nation] bottomed out, but it's a really powerful topic right now,'' says Victoria Dummer, ABC's senior vice president of alternative series and specials. (Fox was en route to Bhutan and unavailable for comment.) ''He has lived his life in this way and wanted to investigate: Is happiness a choice?''

Neat, huh?