We often hear the phrase, “Happiness is an attitude.” What exactly does it mean? How can happiness be both an emotional end-state (as we know it to be) and an attitude – which is more like an opinion or judgment – at the same time?
We know that when we are happy, we look at the world differently, through rose-tinted glasses as it were. We are more generous, expansive, and gregarious, and less prone to making negative judgments. So, being in a “happy state” leads to a certain way of looking at things, a certain attitude, if you will. Is that what people mean when they say happiness is an attitude – that being happy leads to a certain way of looking at things? If so, the statement is not useful, since it does not tell us how to be happy. It merely sheds light on how we are when we are happy.
So, let’s look at an alternative: Happiness comes more easily to those who have adopted a certain way of looking at things. In this view, attitude precedes – and determines – the quality of our emotional state.
At one level, it should be easy to understand how our attitudes can shape our emotions. Findings show that every time we experience an emotion – be it anger, anxiety, sadness, happiness, joy, love, or pride – it is always preceded by a set of thoughts that are unique to that emotion. For example, you may have felt anxious during a taxi ride to the airport because you were not sure if you would make it to your flight on time. In this case, the anxiety was preceded by thoughts pertaining to uncertainty about catching your flight.
If emotions are always preceded by thoughts that are idiosyncratic to the emotion in question, it follows that we can change the emotion by changing the thoughts. Theoretically speaking, we could experience an entirely different emotion by merely re-interpreting a situation. For instance, the anxiousness felt at getting to the airport on time, could be replaced with emotions such as being grateful that there was “hardly any traffic which enabled you to get to the airport way ahead of time!”
Anytime you experience a negative emotion, all you need to do is to come up with a more positive re-interpretation of the event that induced the negative emotion and voila, you will start feeling positive!
It is simple in concept but difficult in practice. Furthermore, you may wonder whether such positively biased re-interpretations are even desirable. You could argue that such positive reinterpretations could lead you to become a delusional personality – someone who does not see reality as it is. More about this later.
There are four attitudes that are useful, all of which share the common underlying feature of directing thoughts toward a more favorable perspective:
- The first is adopting a more favorable perspective in interpreting the actions of other people.
- The second attitude involves adopting a more favorable interpretation in forecasting the impact of a present outcome on future outcomes.
- The third attitude is a variant of the first two, but rather than focusing on other people or on external events, it focuses on internalised assumptions about what leads to happiness.
- Subscription to the three attitudes described thus far will eventually lead to the adoption of a fourth attitude: enhanced confidence in your own ability to deal with anything that life throws at you.
This is the single biggest determinant of happiness. Why? For two reasons.
- First, being confident about facing life’s challenges generates positive emotions because the confidence will make you feel more hopeful about the future, and will thus enable you to look forward to life.
- And second, being confident enhances the chances of making positive events happen in your life. This is not because of magic, but because of what is known as the hypothesis confirmation bias. The hypothesis confirmation bias refers to the following phenomenon: if you believe that a certain outcome will unfold (e.g., if you believe that you will get a job or that you will fail an exam), that outcome has a higher chance of occurring. In medical circles, this is called the placebo effect. The hypothesis confirmation bias has been established so consistently and across such a wide variety of contexts that I will not dwell on it anymore, except to emphasise that if you fully entertain alternative – and more positive – interpretations of others’ behaviors and outcomes, your future will have a greater number of more positive outcomes. This is guaranteed, statistically speaking.
It is important to recognise – adopting the Four Attitudes is not the same as ignoring reality. In the context of interpreting other people’s actions, we would be ignoring reality if we always attributed only positive motives to others’ actions even when all the evidence were to the contrary. In the context of judging outcomes, we would be ignoring reality if we failed to acknowledge the downstream negative consequences. I am not recommending ignoring reality; rather, I am advocating developing the attitude of focusing on the plausible positive possibilities.
We can now return to the original question: “Is happiness an attitude?” The answer clearly appears to be “No!” but we can say that “Happiness results from the adoption of the Four Attitudes.” We can also say that the Four Attitudes are available for anyone who wants to adopt them – anyone who is open-minded enough to give it a try for a few days or weeks and see whether life does, in fact, take a turn for the better.
A number of happiness factors are within your control. On your next “rainy day,” take a minute to count your blessings. With a change in attitude, you may enhance your own happiness and end up smiling, after all.
