Attracting Happiness: Every Cloud Has A Silver Lining

“No such thing as a life that is better than yours.” From J.Cole’s song, “Love Yourz”, my interpretation of this lyric is that each individual is faced with their own adversities in life. Every effort made to overcome these adversities is your pursuit towards happiness. According to Epictetus, “happiness and freedom begin with a clear understanding that some things are within your control and some things are not.” Epictetus’ view particularly resonates with me as it gives a pragmatic view of life in that setbacks are bound to happen. What is important is how you embrace and overcome them. Personally, I feel happy and satisfied when I succeed in conquering my challenges. With this view of happiness in mind, the positive emotions derived benefits you psychologically and improve your mental health state.

Psychologically, my view of happiness helps me become stronger and more resilient. If things go awry, I am reminded that every cloud has a silver lining. Let’s say you are swarmed with numerous deadlines. Since time is a constraint, this poses a challenge to you. You need to strategise yourself to meet the stipulated deadlines. Overcoming these struggles is in itself happiness because you attain a sense of achievement when you conquer them (Miessler, 2018). This is echoed in several studies expressing that embracing rather than resisting challenges increases one’s happiness (Seppälä, 2017). Likewise, according to a Chinese proverb, eating bitterness is good fortune. In suffering, there will always be an opportunity for growth.

Also, grasping this notion of happiness steers us away from feelings of melancholy, in turn, improving our mental health state. Recycling the example about deadlines, one who does not embrace the challenge will view it as burden. You will be inundated with negative thoughts like not meeting the stipulated deadline or worse, fear of getting fired. Scientific research has proven that a pessimistic mindset can undermine your mental well-being resulting in health issues like depression (Wenzlaff, Wegner, & Roper, 1988). To avert yourself from such detrimental effects, it is imperative that we are not apprehensive when faced with challenges. Instead, we should embrace and regard them as our pursuit towards happiness.

As advocated by German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, it is through the labor of life, navigating through challenges, that we grow as people. Happiness and fulfilment are derived from every moment we embrace these challenges. With this, we emerge stronger and more resilient.