“Happiness is a choice. You can choose to be happy. There’s going to be stress in life, but it’s your choice whether you let it affect you or not.”– Valerie Bertinelli
I’ve opened about my battles with depression. An update – yes, I am still taking antidepressants and going to therapy.
Has it made a difference? Yes. My emotional state prior to treatment felt hopeless. I had lost the desire to live. Medication and therapy have provided the clarity to really see what I want.
I just want to be happy and you know what? Happiness really is a choice.
If you suffer from depression sometimes it feels like you have no choice in the matter. Like no matter what you do the fog won’t lift.
Other times, it can feel as if life events outside of our control leave us with no choice either. I remember when I was 17 my father had just been deported to Honduras, I was sexually molested by a close friend of the family, and my mother suffered the first of a series of strokes.
I felt backed up against a wall. I felt as if I had no choice in the matter, but I did. I could have chosen to give up or allow those circumstances to kill my spirit, somehow they didn’t. I believe my faith in God had a lot to do with that.
You choose.
Happiness is a choice.
Perhaps, you are going through a situation where you feel you have no choice. A rape, a death in the family, a divorce, bankruptcy, whatever the situation is. And the truth is your choices probably are really limited at the moment, but at the end of the day… in the grand scheme of things you can take action and choose happiness.
How? By choosing to believe that you were created for a purpose, to love and to be loved by a sovereign God. These difficult moments are only but temporary. Remember that.
We can’t control our past, but our future is still up for grabs.
Fight for your happiness. You can do this through faith. Place your faith on God because he loves you. I assure you it won’t be easy, but you have it in you to be a fighter. We all do.
And here is something I had to learn the hard way… sometimes when fighting for our happiness that means we have to be willing to change the definition of what makes us happy.
Imagine a woman who lost her spouse to a tragic car accident, her version of happiness always included him in the picture. Now, he’s no longer there. She will have to redefine her version of happiness. The same goes for someone whose spouse left them. We can’t control other people. We often don’t even have control over ourselves (I binge ate a whole bag of those mini-Snickers bars this weekend… I know a thing or two about loosing control). What I mean is, sometimes we will have to redefine our version of happiness in order to truly be happy and that’s OK.
We will be happy!
All of us have had struggles. That’s a given. No one ever promised us a pain free life, but I refuse to let others (or circumstances) rob me of the quality of my days here on earth.
Happiness is a choice and today I choose to be happy. Do you?
