Happiness, First Choice: Intention

I do not usually pick up self-help books, but the title was so intriguing (and I was so unhappy) that I decided to take a chance on it. Twenty years later, I am still living into the lessons I learned from this unusual research, written by Rick Foster and Greg Hicks. The book itself does not come from a Christian perspective, so as I read it, I modified their counsel somewhat to include God.

There are nine choices Foster and Hicks discovered that consistently happy people make. Each choice leads to the next in a circular helix very like the chambers of a conch. The choice that launches all the rest is intention.

Children in dysfunctional homes grow up learning not to look or feel too happy. They have been told to “wipe that smile off your face,” they have been caught out enjoying themselves and punished with chores, and when their parents are in a foul mood, the child’s happiness is the first to go. They learn that the happier they are, the worse will be the payback. Such children grow up with an intention deep within them to never be happy. It is too painful, too costly.

Yet, at the beginning of their book, Foster and Hicks provide a questionnaire to help the reader assess their own “happiness quotient” before reading the book, and their first question is about “Intention:”

“Intention requires both the strong desire to be happy and the commitment to be happy. It is the fully conscious decision to choose happiness over unhappiness. As you go throughout your day, to what extent do you actively intend to be happy? Never is one, always is ten”

This chapter opens with these words of wisdom:

The meaning is clear. Those who wish to be happy will find a way.

Intention

The authors contend this is the most hidden and powerful of all the choices, because our intention to be happy is under our control. There is so much in life that we like to think we have some measure of control over, but in reality, we cannot always choose what happens to us, or around us. But, when we give our own agency away by allowing circumstances and people to determine whether, or by how much, we will be happy, we have actually chosen to be unhappy.

Am I living my life, or is my life living me? Do I see myself as a victim of circumstances, reacting to what happens to me, or do I see myself as actively engaged in how I will respond to my surroundings and to the events and people in my life? As I was reading this book, I underlined the core truth of what the authors were trying to convey

… the quality of our emotional experience is based almost entirely on the nature and strength of our intentions, and very little on the actual things that happen in our lives. That’s why happy people we found everywhere are purposefully finding opportunities to formulate specific intentions all day long.

Rick Foster and Greg Hicks, How We Choose to be Happy, 22

Can we really do that, though?

Can we simply choose to be happy even when something awful happens? How can we be happy in the midst of terrifying, or horrifying, or enraging circumstances? It seems almost cruel to expect that of anyone.

Intend to Give Thanks

But that is the same puzzled and uncomfortable response I felt when I first started reading about thanksgiving and joy in Paul’s letters. “give thanks in all circumstances,” Paul wrote, for example, “for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thessalonians 1:2 NRSVUE).

In fact, throughout his letters, Paul often stopped to give thanks to God, even for the horrific things that happened to him, because it was all part and parcel with belonging to God and doing God’s good work. That core truth made Paul incandescently happy.

Intend to Be Joyful

And the Christians of Paul’s day understood what that meant, to be in dire distress yet still have joy. Paul wrote about the Macedonian believers who “during a severe ordeal of affliction their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part” (2 Corinthians 8:2). It was not as though they did not feel the full spectrum of pain and suffering during their circumstances. But that did not touch the deep joy they had in being able to help the believers in Jerusalem who were going through their own sore travail.

Later, Paul wrote to another group of Christians, saying, “May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from [Jesus’s] glorious power, so that you may have all endurance and patience, joyfully” (Colossians 1:11 NRSVUE, modifications added). In this sense, happiness is like the emotional foundation that sustains all the rest of one’s feelings.

Intend to Think Well

One person the authors interviewed spoke about telling herself each morning that her day is going to be good. Whatever happens as her day unfolds, she remembers that she intends to have a good one. Is that even scriptural, though? Well, turns out it is. Back to Paul again. Paul regularly spoke of the importance of keeping vigil over our thoughts. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul warned that spiritual warfare happens unseen, within our minds and hearts. The only way to do battle, then, with these powerful evil forces is to train our minds heavenward. But how?

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Philippians 4:8 NRSVUE

It is a well-known and oft-repeated passage, and it matches a proverb Paul surely had memorized as a boy.

Keep your heart with all vigilance,
    for from it flow the springs of life.

Proverbs 4:23 NRSVUE

The Glass Half Full

The people interviewed for this book have stumbled across a profound truth that Christians already know but we do not always live by. The only enduring happiness comes from within, because we have chosen it. It is not just a feeling (although it is also a feeling) it is a frame of mind, it is a world view, it is the filter through which everything else is processed. And for Christians, our access to joy is limitless, for we have the Holy Spirit whose fruit is joy.

Is conflating happiness with joy cheating a little bit? Not really. Paul wrote, in his first letter to the Corinthian church, that there are three main pillars in the life of a believer: faith, hope, and love. Think about the underpinnings of those three words. Each one sees the glass half full.

Faith

Faith believes Jesus. Faith knows even what has not happened yet will happen, knows that we are truly born anew from above, and we have been profoundly changed. Faith knows Jesus is risen from the dead, the firstborn of many (us) to come. Faith knows that no matter what, Jesus is with us to the end of the age, experiencing everything with us and available to us for all we need. Faith operated in that knowing, regardless of what people and circumstances may seem to imply.

Hope

Hope holds onto what God says is and will be. Hope keeps hoping when everything and everyone else says there is nothing left to hope in, or hope for anymore. Hope looks at disaster and whispers, “But even this cannot thwart God from doing good.” Hope recognizes that these things take time, that the road includes hazards, but keeps walking because the unseen finish line will be worth it. Hope is the first spark to ignite in the human heart, and the last ember to die.

Love

Peter once famously wrote,

Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8 NRSVUE

Love tends to minimize faults and maximize the good in a person. We say love sees through rose-colored glasses. When we watch a couple clearly besotted with each other, strolling hand-in-hand, or a parent holding their newborn baby, or best friends playing together, we smile, enjoying vicariously their love. When we operate in love, everything we experience in association with the beloved is seen through that lens.

This is, at its essence, what happy people know. When we intend to be happy, everything we experience is seen through that lens, and processed through that filter, even terrifying, horrifying experiences. This is especially so for Christians, for we know we will never find ourselves without recourse, without resources, and all alone.

[Cover photo: Photo by Khushi Gandhi on Unsplash]