Manufactured happiness

A few posts back, I suggested that we have to make a conscious decision to be happy and we must learn to make due with what we have. Guess what? I blogged from my personal experience, and apparently, some smarter people have done research into this and here's the video that I just stumbled onto.

What it comes down to is that the availability of choice is the source of our unhappiness. In other words, if we don't choose to live with what we have/are, then we are condemned to unhappily chase that nebulous, elusive dream.

I stumbled upon this idea that we have to consciously choose to be happy from my personal life. People with limited intelligence, by that, I mean, retards are extremely happy. They are happy in the sense that they are not unhappy. They don't know any better. The other set of people who are relatively happy is older adults; as people get older, opportunities and freedom to choose once available to them no longer exist and they eventually learn to accept their conditions. These are people who are aware of something better but choose to accept their current situation.

This is all well and good, limiting one's ability to choose and accepting reality. I also see some who are also unhappy with themselves, these are individuals who constantly compare themselves against other. I might touch on this topic in the future. For now, I have always emphasize on focus on oneself, what we want, and we will deal with a bigger context in relation to others.