Three Ways to Choose Happiness

In President Uchtdorf's April 2016 Priesthood Session talk, he said that he's fond of the following quote from Abraham Lincoln: "Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." This quote has prompted me to ask myself "how does one make up his or her mind to be happy?" Certainly, a person's natural optimism has a strong influence on their happiness in any given situations, but there are some choices we can make that will facilitate our happiness. Here are a few choices we can make that will make it easier for us to choose to be happy.

First, we can practice love. It is important for us to learn how to love one another, but it is just as important for us to learn to love ourselves. When we love ourselves and our fellow man, we can be more comfortable, both with ourselves and with others, and that will help us have an inner peace that will allow us to find happiness.

Second, we can surround ourselves with people who bring us up more than they weigh us down. Spending time with loved ones who contribute to our happiness will help us achieve and maintain happiness, no matter what situations we find ourselves in. Having good friends around us will help us to be happy, just as being friends with ourselves will.

Third, we can make wise choices. It is sometimes difficult to make good decisions, and stressing about what decisions we should make can certainly detract from our happiness, but making good and wise decisions can help us avoid pitfalls that would detract from our happiness even more. Furthermore, as I learned yesterday, making good decisions can lead to receiving blessings and other positive consequences that can positively add to our happiness.

This is not a conclusive list of things a person can do to choose happiness. I'm sure that there are many methods a person can choose to make up their minds to be happy, most of which would probably fall under the category of making wise and righteous decisions. My point is that though happiness is more a matter of attitude than circumstances, our happiness can be affected by or circumstances, and our circumstances can be influenced by our choices. If we make wise decisions, including choosing to love ourselves and others and to surround ourselves with people who love us, we can place ourselves in circumstances that make it much, much easier to be happy. Presidents Uchtdorf and Lincoln are right: we can choose to be happy, but part of choosing to be happy lies in making other choices that make it easier to choose to be happy.