Most people are happy at least sometimes. For most people, it is easy to imagine a not-too-unusual scenario that would be sufficient to prevent their happiness.
Accordingly, it isn’t unusual to consider our happiness as something we can influence, but yet see it as something that ultimately lies outside of our control.
There is a better way.
You can be completely happy, content, and fulfilled all the time. You can come to the point where nothing that could ever happen to you could reduce your peace, happiness, and joy.
Joy is not an externally imposed feeling. It comes from within. It is not something that is possessed or experienced, but the value you perceive in what is possessed or experienced. It is informational. It comes from knowledge.
Joy is not something that happens to you, but rather something you go find.
Joy is not a situation—it is an outcome. Joy is something that you can build once you have the tools to do so.
Humans are self-directed, autonomous creatures. We are capable of acting and securing what we desire. Acquiescing to whatever chance circumstances we find ourselves in is living far below our privilege.
You can learn how to act instead of merely being acted upon. You can choose how to be. You can acquire the tools to manufacture internal happiness that can’t be affected by what is going on around you.
You can create joy by discovering the actions, beliefs, and desires that produce it, and by implementing them in your life. As you incrementally increase in your understanding of the recipe for joy, and your degree of adherence to it, you will increase in joy.