Harris Fellman Live Life To Its Fullest

Easier to choose Anger or Happiness?

Interesting observation this morning…

I was having a conversation with my daughter about the idea that she could just ‘choose’ to be happy … she was focusing on being angry or upset … and I tried to tell her she could just CHOOSE to be happy.

I was in a pretty happy mood myself. So, to prove it to her, I CHOSE TO BE ANGRY instead. I said “okay, that’s it, let’s go back home … let’s just stay upset and forget (the nice thing we were about to do)!”

And wow, within seconds, I was *actually* angry. I felt it throughout my body … and my daughter was apologizing … “I’m sorry, I don’t want to go back home … I’m sorry, I’ll be happy I’ll be happy”.

UGH, not the way I wanted to get that out of her – and I’m sure *she* didn’t learn the same lesson that I did. Anyway, when I tried to ‘snap back to happiness’ – I started skipping and saying “okay let’s be happy now… tra la la” — and it felt ~really weird~ – she said “that’s more like crazy, not happy, Dad”.

Interesting, huh?

It seems “normal” to go from happy-to-angry … but go the other direction and it seems crazy. Hmmm…

“HMMMM….”, I say.

Oh, and it was very easy to go from happy-to-angry, too… and much more difficult to ‘get happy’ again. I’ll be careful which games I choose to play with myself (and my children) from here on out, that’s for sure.

Just an observation along the road to enlightenment I guess.