Epictetus And Seligman's Essay 'Very Happy People'

When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Lemonade
You can’t help but turn on the news and see reports of death, tragic events, or negative stories. This could easily make anyone unhappy just because of what they are viewing. What you decide to do with that information is up to you. You can let it affect you in an adverse manner or you can separate yourself from the negativity. If you really want to, you can choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice. If we were to look at the findings of Ed Diener & Martin Seligman, both psychologists and authors of the research project Very Happy People, we would understand that there are factors that influence high happiness. The gentlemen researched 222 undergraduates. “We compared the upper 10% of consistently
very happy people with average and very unhappy people”. Their findings showed that very happy people were highly social and had stronger romantic and other social relationships than less happy people. This is a perfect example of social happiness and the impact it has on our lives. Happiness comes in many forms. Listening to music, drawing, meditating, hanging out with friends & family, shopping, working out, and taking walks are just a few examples of what could make one happy. It’s a known medical fact that when people work out their body releases chemicals called endorphins. Endorphins trigger a positive feeling in the body, similar to what morphine does. One can get that feeling of euphoria without the dangers and side effects of a drug.
Not everyone has the same outlook as the aforementioned psychologists.
Epictetus, the stoic philosopher who was alive (55-135 CE), believed that some things are up to us and some are not. “Opinions, desires, impulses, aversions, those are all up to us. Our bodies, our possessions, reputations, those are not up to us”. Epictetus believes that we allow others to make us feel the way we do. How we choose to react is on us. Epictetus goes on to explain that “when we are thwarted or upset, distressed, let us never blame someone else but rather ourselves, that is our own judgements. An uneducated person accuses others when he is doing badly; a partly educated person accuses himself; an educated person accuses neither someone else nor himself”. He is explaining that we have a choice whether we allow people to make us feel a certain way. According to the beliefs of stoic philosophers, we must look at ourselves and not put blame on others but we are to take responsibility for our own feelings and
actions.
People have their own opinion on whether or not happiness is a choice.
Sherman Alexie wrote a book titled: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. You can see a lot of Epictetus' thinking in this book. A perfect example would be the main subject of the book, Arnold was born into a very poor family on an indian reservation. This would coincide with the fact that the subject had no control over where he was born or who he was born to. The book is actually inspired by the author's own personal experiences growing up. He had no control over this but because this is all he knew growing up he was used to it. He actually winds up making the choice to better himself by leaving the reservation and going to an “all white” high school where he knew he would have a better chance at becoming something in life. This is a perfect example on how we have control over some things and yet have no control over other things. We choose what we will do with our lives, we can write our own endings.
In conclusion, happiness is a choice. When I was first asked this question I was conflicted. I believed that this question had 2 answers, yes and no. After stepping out of my comfort zone and looking at this question unbiasedly it became more clear to me. We, as humans always have a choice in our own happiness. Epictetus was right in saying that we allow how other's make us feel, and that we need to take responsibility for our own actions and stop putting blame on others. The sooner
we do that, the happier we will be.