My Personal Plan to Achieve Happiness
By: Nathan Nielson
Throughout my life I have been involved in this constant battle to stay positive and happy. When I am victorious in this battle I feel happy and good about myself, but when I fail to be happy I get down on myself. Sometimes I get so down on myself that I am not even sure if the gigantic amount of effort required to achieve happiness is worth the happiness I receive. I just decided that there would be better days to come if I just endured through this time of sorrow and stress. Then I enrolled in this class titled “Great Works.” In this class all I have studied so far is happiness. After studying happiness for such a long period of time I have realized that happiness is a lot simpler than I once thought. Yet, attaining happiness can also be very complicated. I have determined that there are four different aspects of happiness; they are having a positive attitude, loving yourself, letting the past go, and having faith and hope in life.
One of the defining laws of the universe around us is the “Law of Inertia,” which states, “Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.”(University of Tennessee). In a way, this Law defines my attitude. When I am thinking positive thoughts I want to continue thinking positive thoughts, when I am think negative thoughts I want to continue thinking negative thoughts. It is kind of silly to want to think negative thoughts, but for some reason I just want to stay negative. Yet, I want to be happy and joyful at the same time. When I am faced with this dilemma I have had many different responses, but out of all my responses having an “attitude of gratitude” (President Thomas S. Monson, April 1992) has worked the best. When I have an “attitude of gratitude” I start looking around and recognizing all of the wonderful, beautiful things and people that surround me and I begin to wonder how I could ever be negative in the first place. Pretty soon, I forget what I was being negative about and I am having a great day. I would give a very detailed example of this, but I honestly cannot remember what I was being negative about in the first place! That is how well it works for me! In fact, being grateful is the very essence of a positive attitude. And my gratitude all starts with a choice made by me. As Plutarch wisely stated, “But sensible people behave like bees; bees get honey from thyme, which is very tart and dry, and sensible people often get something appropriate and useful to themselves from the most untoward situation.” Therefore, my situation has absolutely no affect on my attitude, rather I have one-hundred percent control over my attitude. When looked at in this light I begin to realize how silly it really is to choose to be negative. Instead, I will choose to be positive.
Loving yourself is one of the hardest things for me to continually do in my life. I constantly feel that I am not good enough in others’ eyes and I will never be perfect. When I start to think these things I get into a dangerously negative mood that can ruin my whole day. A thought that I get that can send me into this mood is the thought that I am not happy, so I must not be perfect and doing things right. It is honestly funny to me that when I am not happy I decide to negative about it instead of trying to fix my lack of happiness. I also feel like there are so many different, rivaling expectations for me that I need to meet for others to like me. I don’t like stressing out over whether or not others like me, but I do it because I feel I am a bad person if other people don’t like me. I have talked about this many times with my parents and the quote I created from their advice was this: “If someone doesn’t like me, that is their problem.” I like this combined quote because it made me realize that I am me and how could I ever be better than myself. I also realized that I love to be me, so why not be me. There is absolutely no reason on this Earth why I should not love being myself. Robert Louis Stevenson once stated in his essay titled “The Lantern Bearers,” “The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night; the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned; not a ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public: a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the knowledge.” This illustrates that even though your life may seem dark a dreary to others, as long as you love yourself you will always be happy. Sure, I may fall and fail, but as long as I get back up and get going in the right direction again I have no reason to dislike myself. I also know that I am Heavenly Father’s son and He loves me. This really helps me remember how wonderful I am. Another reason why I should love myself is that I will be stuck with me forever, so the sooner I learn to love myself the happier I will be.
In late 2013 an animated Disney Film titled “Frozen” came out in Theaters. “Frozen” featured a song titled “Let it Go.” Pretty soon the main singing repertoire in any home with a young girl was “Let it Go.” I honestly didn’t like “Let it Go” at first, but then I realized that I probably needed to take some of Elsa’s advice.
One of the hardest struggles for me is forgiving myself. I make a mistake and instead of forgiving myself I beat myself up and get mad because I didn’t do my absolute best. I then had an epiphany. What I need to do when I made a mistake was “Let it Go,” repent, and do my best to do what is right from then on. I still have a hard time letting go of my struggles, but when I think about my mistakes logically I realize that there is no use or benefit in beating myself up about past decisions. Nephi was a great example of one who let go of the past and looked toward the future. In 1 Nephi 7: 21, Nephi states, “I did frankly forgive them all that they had done.” My plan is to be like Nephi and Elsa; who let go of the past and looked forward with faith and hope toward the future.
I have noticed that when I am feeling down and negative I tend to be very afraid of the future. I fear that I am not going to get a good job, get married, or get a four year scholarship to BYU. This has really put a large amount of stress on me and has made life very unenjoyable. I feel that every single one of my actions will make or break my life and because of this I feel every single action I perform must be performed with great effort of mind. This tires me out and makes life become a stress fest. One way to solve this problem is to simplify my life. I have not engaged in a many extra-curricular activities recently due to the fact that they just increase the stress in my life. Leo Tolstoy illustrated that a simple life really does lead to great happiness in his story Ilyas. In this story Ilyas worked until he was very rich. Then, through a series of bad events he lost almost all of his wealth. He then proceeded to live a simple life working for a neighbor with very little worldly possessions. This is how Ilyas described the change in his and his wife’s life, “ For fifty years we sought happiness, but only now at last have we found it.” Ilyas did not find happiness amidst all his worldly possession due to all the stress and care it put upon him. He then discovered true happiness when he simplified his life.
Having faith in God, I have found, is a very, very effective way to eliminate stress and fear in life. I was having a really hard time because of all the stress put upon me by school and my future. My Grandpa then talked to me about how crucial and important faith in Jesus Christ is to living a peaceful and happy life. From that day forward I have tried to have faith in Christ and allow that faith to overcome my fear. A great example of faith overcoming fear in my life was when I took the Math Final and my high school. This test was very important to me because it could make or break my A in math. Usually, I would be very stressed and worried about big tests, but before I took this test I decided I would have a spirit of faith as I took the test. I began the test with the attitude that I would do my best and then I would leave the rest to God.. This allowed me to think more clearly, enjoy my life at that moment, and realize that it is just a math test. In fact, I was actually happy while taking the test! 2 Timothy 1:7 states, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” Therefore, I was not designed to be fearful, but rather to be faithful. My plan to be happy is to have faith rule over my fear because both cannot exist in the same mind.
In the end, life would be a very miserable and burdensome experience without happiness and joy. I do not want to have a miserable and burdensome experience, but rather a life filled with peace, joy, and happiness. My plan to achieve a peaceful, joyful, and happy life is to: consciously choose to be positive, love myself, because I am the best me I can be, Let the past Go, have faith and hope in Christ and my future, and simplify my life.
