Happiness is a Choice

I hope you all had a great week. As a yoga teacher and mindfulness coach I often talk about gratitude. Over the years I have done lots of reading on the science behind gratitude and there is, in fact, lots of scientific evidence to support a gratitude practice. Especially when things are challenging, when we can connect to what we are grateful for it actually changes the molecular structure of the brain ((and our outlook) in a positive way.

The story below is a powerful reminder of this concept and I shared it with my classes this past week.

The 92-year-old, petite, well-poised and proud lady, who is fully dressed each morning by eight o’clock, with her hair fashionably coifed and makeup perfectly applied, even though she is legally blind, moved to a nursing home today. Her husband of 70 years recently passed away, making the move necessary.
After many hours of waiting patiently in the lobby of the nursing home, she smiled sweetly when told her room was ready. As she maneuvered her walker to the elevator, I provided a visual description of her tiny room, including the eyelet sheets that had been hung on her window. “I love it,” she stated with the enthusiasm of an eight-year-old having just been presented with a new puppy. “Mrs. Jones, you haven’t seen the room…. just wait.” “That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she replied. “Happiness is something you decide on ahead of time. Whether I like my room or not doesn’t depend on how the furniture is arranged. It’s how I arrange my mind. I already decided to love it. It’s a decision I make every morning when I wake up. I have a choice; I can spend the day in bed recounting the difficulty I have with the parts of my body that no longer work, or get out of bed and be thankful for the ones that do. Each day is a gift, and as long as my eyes open I’ll focus on the new day and all the happy memories I’ve stored away, just for this time in my life.” She went on to explain, “Old age is like a bank account; you withdraw from it what you’ve put in. So, my advice to you would be to deposit a lot of happiness in the bank account of memories. Thank you for your part in filling my memory bank. I am still depositing.”

Both on the mat and off the brain’s negativity bias tends to focus on what is wrong versus what is right. With practice using both the body and the mind, we can shift that habit and deposit joyful memories in our memory bank regardless of what might not be how we want it to be. It is a powerful reminder that we always have the chance to continue depositing. My wish for all of us is that we do just that.