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Raylonzo Osborne

Professor Corri Ditch

ENG 115

04 October 2018

The Ways Of Happiness

Happiness can come from many things like the mind and materialistic things. In order to

stay happy, the mind has to be at a peaceful state to feel happy. The process of happiness can be

a struggle to reach if one's mind isn’t set to become happy. The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler,

Sonja Lyubomirsky, and David Brooks mainly focus on internal happiness. The Dalai Lama and

Howard Cutler argue that happiness is within one’s self. They transform happiness by stating

happiness comes from the mind and having a clear mind. Sonja Lyubomirsky argument is facts

about happiness being shown with explaining a chart determining happiness.​ She transforms

happiness by simply explaining how happiness is determined from intentional activity.​ David

Brooks argues that suffering from something can bring a different outcome in one’s self. Brooks

transforms happiness by discussing how ​being formed through suffering people don't come out

the same​. On the other hand, Graham Hill focuses on the external perspective of happiness and

he argues that you don’t have to buy materialistic items to be happy and he suggests to get rid of

things and live with less. Graham Hill transforms happiness by traveling to experience and lives

without gadgets. Altogether Lama, Cutler, Brooks, and Lyubomirsky are arguing about internal

happiness and Hill is arguing about external space.

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Finding happiness is coming from within the mind and having a clear mindset. The Dalai

Lama and Howard Cutler explain how happiness can be a feeling within the mind. In “The

Source of Happiness” by The Dalai Lama says “Researchers have conducted a number of

experiments demonstrating that one’s level of life satisfaction can be enhanced simply by

shifting one’s perspective and contemplating how things could be worse”(Lama 23). The

research The Dalai and Cutler found is basically changing someone's way of thinking can simply

make them happy. Also, the Dalai Lama and Cutler explain that happiness feeling by having a

calm mind and thinking clearly. “The Source of Happiness” by The Dalai Lama and Cutler says

“ On the other hand, if you can maintain a calm, peaceful state of mind, then you can be a very

happy person even if you have poor health”(Lama 25). In other words, you can be unhappy and

as long as you have a clear steady mind you can become a very happy person.

How to determine happiness is by having a clear free mind and becoming peaceful with

one’s self. Sonja Lyubomirsky explains how intentional activity can make a person happier. In

“How Happy Are You and Why?” Lyubomirsky states “To understand that 40 percent of our

happiness is determined by intentional activity is to appreciate the promise of the great impact

that you can make on your own life through intentional strategies that you can implement to

remake yourself as a happier person”(Lyubomirsky 185). Intentional activity can be a way to

think about a person’s life to use to become even happier. Happiness can be just a feeling within

a person mind and how they think about happiness because of Lyubomirsky stating happiness is

in the mind. In “How Happy Are You and Why?” Lyubomirsky says “Happiness, more than

anything, is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in

which we reside”(Lyubomirsky 185). So in order to feel happy, a person has to believe in

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happiness to be able to feel happy. Also, Lyubomirsky talks about not thinking too hard on the

negative because it can cause a person to not become or feel happy.

Although, ​Suffering can lead to something good and can eventually become or feeling

happy. In “What Suffering Does” David Brooks says “People shoot for happiness but feel

formed through suffering” (Brooks 284). The feeling of being happy can be there but suffering

can change one’s perspective on being happy. Brooks also explains how a form of suffering can

make a person become different and not having the same mindset because of suffering. In “What

Suffering Does” Brooks says “ But the big thing that suffering does is it takes you outside of

precisely that logic that the happiness mentality encourages”(Brooks 284). Suffering doesn’t

have the same outcome as a happy mindset when going through something because one’s mind

came become different after. Also in the article “What Suffering Does” Brooks explains “The

theologian Paul Tillich wrote that people who endure suffering are taken beneath the routines of

life and find they are not who they believed themselves to be”(Brooks 285). So suffering can

make a person mindset to think differently until the suffering is not there anymore and a person’s

mindset that had after suffering could be something totally different because what the suffering

did to one’s mind. In “What Suffering Does” Brooks says “Recovering from suffering is not like

recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different”(Brooks

286). Brook’s quote is basically stating suffering can make you not a really happy person but just

more of a different person, but something good can come out of suffering.

Materials and electronics can block or take away a person happiness. Graham Hill

explains how living without a lot can still make you feel happy and become happier. In the

article “Living with Less. A Lot Less” Hill explains his story by saying “ For me, it took 15
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years, a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live

a bigger, better, richer life, with less”(Hill 308). Hills way of becoming happier was to get rid of

everything and simply living with a lot less. Also, Hill discusses how many things he has bought

he wasn't feeling happy anymore because of everything he had within a short period of time. In

“Living with Less. A Lot Less” Hill says “I don’t know that the gadgets I was collecting in my

loft were part of an aberrant or antisocial behavior plan during the first months I lived in

SoHo”(Hill 311). The materials were taking over his life without him realizing it and he wasn’t

very happy. Also, Hill gives some studies about living with less and how people are not happy

because of it. In “Living with Less. A Lot Less” Hill explains a study and says “In a study

published last year titled “Life at Home in the twenty-first century,” researchers at U.C.L.A

observed 32 middle-class Los Angeles families and found that all of the mothers’ stress

hormones spiked during the time they spent dealing with their belongings” ( Hill 310). ​Having a

lot of personal belongings can become very stressful if a person has way too much of something.

In other words, Hills argument in order to stay happy is to live with less and live life without

having more than you need and getting rid of all the materialistic things to become more happier.

All authors explained and argued their point of views on happiness and how to become and stay

internally and externally happy within a person.

In conclusion, each author explains there argument on happiness in an external or internal

way whether it is staying at peace with one’s self to become happy or simply suffering from

something and get a different outcome after the suffering has. ​Also, having intentional activity to

stay happy or try to become happy can be forms of internal happiness because it’s not being

materialistic like eternal happiness,​ The author Graham Hill explains happiness by getting rid of
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personal items to become a happier person. ​Happiness can be shown in different ways as each

author gives great examples and show key points in their argument of how to become happy by

doing a certain thing or giving up something.

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Works Cited

Cutler, Howard. “The Source of Happiness” Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight

Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan Education imprints, pg. 21-32

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does” Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight Reader.

Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan Education imprints, pg. 284-287

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Loss” Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford Spotlight

Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan Education imprints, pg. 308-312

Lama, Dalai. Cutler, Howard “The Source of Happiness” Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford

Spotlight Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan Education imprints, pg. 21-32

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness: A Bedford

Spotlight Reader. Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan Education imprints, pg. 179-196