Happiness: It’s a Mindset
Happiness has been on my mind lately. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life, and I’m honestly not quite sure why. Maybe because I’ve done so much growing and changing in the last year or so? Change and uncertainty have brought temporary freak-outs, but my friends helped big time, and I’ve learned to be happy no matter my circumstances.
Maybe it’s just age: Lots of my thirty-something friends say they grew settled and happy in their latter thirties. I really like my life and who I’ve become.
So today I was stunned to listen to this TED talk by Becky Blanton: “The Year I Was Homeless.” She’s a writer who decided to camp in a van for a year. You see how I can relate, LOL?
Within months, she decided she was homeless (!!!!), even though she still had her van. This perplexes me on many levels, because I meet plenty of people who choose to move into a van and travel. A good writing friend of mine is doing it now. There’s been an upsurge of young people and college students who wisely decide to live in a van or small motorhome to save money. Even the famous and fabulous INTERN!
Visitors to the RV Resort I’m staying at are so varied. Some are retirees in $200,000+ motorhomes who’ve dreamed and worked all their lives to live this way. Some are families who crave freedom and want to “roadschool” their kids and let them experience the country. Some have jobs that move from place to place, and this lifestyle allows them to have a family and a home on the road.
Some are people like me, who’ve decided to live simply. Some see it as temporary until they buy a winter home, or until they make more money. Some see it as a result of unfortunate circumstances. I just met a man who’s decided this lifestyle is “getting back on his feet.”
It’s odd: Same lifestyle, such a range of interpretations. Some see it as failure, some as a dream fulfilled.
Eventually, Blanton learned that homelessness was a mindset, not a lifestyle. I liked when she said, “People are not where they live, where they sleep, or what their life situation is at any given time.”
The next TED talk was “The Science of Happiness,” by Nancy Etcoff. How apropos!
Money does influence happiness, but materialism derails those things we humans are genetically programmed to receive pleasure from: enjoying the natural world, getting outside of ourselves, and the act of reproduction—sex. (Did you know having sex once a week is a bigger predictor of happiness than money?)
Her research answered how I’ve become so happy this year. I’ve gotten huge pleasure from discovering the natural world around me. I’ve gotten rid of most of my things and have become very happy being un-materialistic. (I can’t tell you how wonderful it feels! Definitely the number one contributor to my happiness.)
I’ve come to prefer walking outside to get to the bathroom so I can look at the stars more often. I wake up every morning and look at a sunrise over a mountain range. I volunteer. I live within a small and social community, both at the RV Resort and in the coffee shop I frequently write in. I even have a plan for the reproduction bit, even if it probably won’t involve sex. 
(Three and a half out of four is a pretty darn good life.)
At the end, she quotes Rilke:
If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches.
One last note on happiness. Dan Gilbert, in his talk called, "Why Are We Happy?" notes how humans believe that acquiring something or changing our circumstances will make us happy, but that research shows this is untrue: traumatic events and incredibly wonderful events tend to return us to our previous happiness level within months.
Dan Gilbert quoted Sir Thomas Browne:
I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerable than Achilles; fortune hath not one place to hit me.
Our circumstances may change, but we make our happiness independent of those circumstances. Not counting depression and mental illness, science says we have the power to change our happiness level by getting out in nature, living outside of ourselves, losing our materialism, and having sex. *grins*
What do you think? Have you ever had a mindshift that turned a life you hated into one you treasured, or vice versa?
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Natasha Fondren is a writer traveling the U.S. in a camper with her four cats. She is currently enjoying the lizards and desert heat in Arizona.
When Lana and I moved to Abita springs we did buy a house but it’s a very simple home and we are incredibly happy with it. I too love to get out to see the sky whenever I can.
Aw, that sounds lovely, Charles! I didn’t mean to sound anti-house.
I’ve had a few life-altering revelations in my time, but there was a lot of healing before that…and also a year of REAL homelessness as a teen. A year of sleeping in cemetaries and under train bridges. Having a van would have been a luxury, to be honest…
Lana, that was my thought. I was totally thinking, “You were SO not homeless!” That’s what surprised me the most: she managed to take a tough situation and turn it into a disaster just by her mindset.
Deciding to purchase a house two years ago was a life-changing moment for me. I think because a home is such a settling place, it has permanence and history and sameness… it gives me a center that is immovable. I feel like, in my own home, that I belong somewhere, right here. I never really had that feeling renting, or even when I lived with the ex-man (seriously, when they won’t give you more than one shelf in the bedroom closet, theres a problem!). Even though money is stressful and raising a teen even more so at times, my home is there. And everything will work out fine.
Houses are definitely nice.
I feel the same way about my camper. It might be one wheels, but it’s my home. 
It just gives you that great feeling when you crawl in bed, you know?
(Holy crap, that is a problem!!!)
Remember what the Dalai Lama said, “They may take my possessions, but I will not give them my mind.”
Nice posting, Natasha.
That’s a great quote, Rick!
It’s very true that your outlook/mindset makes the difference. But sometimes you need prozac.
Seriously, I had mood disorders throughout my adult life until menopause killed the hormone rollercoaster. Your body chemistry, particularly hormones that are not in balance, can really mess you up.
It’s good to be happy.
I agree completely, Writtenwyrdd. I use St. John’s Wort two weeks out of the month. Hormones are AWFUL! It’s totally unfair, having to deal with them.
You’re so right. Granted external circumstances have some effect on our happines but ultimately happiness is in our mind (Dalia Lama)
Sogyal Rinpoche tells the story of a student of his who had been miserable for years. One day he decided he was stick of being miserable so he decided to be happy and he was. He simply began looking at his life from a happy perspective. How we look is how we see.
One of the interesting things in the second video was that happiness is not opposite from miserable. They are on different “tracks,” so to speak. So it is possible to be both happy and miserable at the same time, LOL.
I like that story, Tahlian!
I love this line in your post: “Same lifestyle, such a range of interpretations.” It reminds me of a book I’ve been meaning to read: Same Bed, Different Dreams.
I’ll have to check that book out, Barrie!
Something really strange happened minutes before I read your blog. I wrote about moving forward and how to accomplish the same. (I posted it at my 5 min. sprint.)
I choose happy. I could be sad and have good reason, but still, sad anchors me to a dark and desolate place, devouring my strength. So I made the choice to accept what I cannot change, yet not letting it beat me into submission.
Synchronicity! Or something like that?
I hear you! I’m totally with you.
I’m trying to be happy. I’m not, but I’m trying. I was just thinking today of all the things that are no longer in my life that were making me unhappy, but that hasn’t fixed everything.
Awww! I hope you find some happy stuff, Melanie! *hugs*
I try really hard to appreciate my life, because I know I have so much. If I go through a blue period, it really helps to “catch” those negative thoughts, because they usually don’t even make sense. Once I realize that, I feel better already!
I think I was a happier person once I hit late 30′s. I was too nervous and eager to please before that.
Awww, Robin. I am SO good at irrational when I’m down, LOL! They’re fun to make fun of in hindsight.
I was too eager to please for most of my life, too!
I enjoyed this post. I agree that people have a natural “happy” setting. It’s interesting to see that in other people – how they react to things in relation to their natural happy setting. When G gets older, I’m going to tell her to make sure that she dates/marries a happy person – I know she probably won’t respect my opinion so much when she gets to that point, but I can hope!!!
That’s great advice, Mom2Brie! I hope she finds someone happy and wonderful! And if you bring her up telling her that… I mean, my dad died when I was 10, and yet I followed his dating advice, LOL.
LOVE this post.
For me, I nearly died 17 years ago . . . I was in the hospital for a MONTH and someone told me to read Man’s Search for Meaning. The book literally changed my mindset. I DECIDED that if I had a reason to live, I could overcome the agony. So I found my reason(s) . . . I have four children, and most days, no matter what . . . I get up and love them and care for them . . . and life goes on. I still have pain but . . . I have reasons to love life that are fiercer than pain.
That book is surprisingly hard to find in the stores, Erica! I’ve yet to find it, although they always have some of his later works.
I hit submit instead of enter, LOL!
That makes so much sense. Children certainly do give you a reason to live! I remember, when I could hardly get out of bed and I was in constant pain and couldn’t think, I just felt my life was pointless. I mean… I couldn’t think. I wasn’t depressed, I just thought it logical that my life should end. But I didn’t want to upset my students, LOL.
Happiness is a warm bed!
It is true that the most basic things probably makes us the happiest. But, hell, if I woke up tomorrow and was thirty-something again I’d be deleriously happy!
Awww, Eric! I think that’s true! And LOL! I’d take 27.
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