Today is International Day of Happiness! Yes, you read that correctly.

Happiness is often seen as a destination in our society (I can only speak of the general western culture). We often hear things like "I'll be happy when..." ... my kids behave, I get that promotion, my new car arrives or when I finally get to lie on the beach in the Caribbean with a Pina Colada in hand and let the sound of the waves gently soothe my soul. All things considered, it is seen as an external goal which we cannot control.

But this couldn't be further from the truth about true happiness! And honestly, you probably already know this innately, but have been sold the story from every advert you have ever seen that happiness is something you buy. However, as that old cliche goes, you can't buy happiness!

But what does it mean to be happy? Sure when we are on that beach with that Pina Colada in hand and the kids aren't fighting and the sun is beaming down we feel great, we feel light and happy. But is this actually happiness? Or is it actually contentment, peace or a moment of joy? Is it possible that we have mis-labelled happiness?

In the book "The Courage to be Happy" by Ichiro Kishimi / Fumitake Koga which looks at Adlerian Psychology, a part of the focus of the discussion is about a person needing to feel like they have purpose, that they are of use to someone, to their community even. If we do not feel like we are of use then we cannot feel happiness. Now this does not need to be some devine purpose, this purpose can be as simple as being able to give a person a space to be comfortable, to bring your neighbours bins in, to be the reason someone smiled today. Each of these little purposes are all things that are based on the internal choices which we make several times each and every day. So, this tells us that happiness is actually a choice. And the courage required to be happy is simply the courage to make a choice to be happy.

So if it is up to us to choose happiness, then it is our responsibility to do the things that make us happier. Often this comes down to our ability to choose our response to a situation (our response-ability (this is from Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stay tuned for that review too!). When presented with a scenario we have a choice to make regarding our response to this, for ease of writing lets assume there are two responses to this scenario. Response 1 could be "I cannot believe this has happened to me... why is it always me that bad things happen to?" while response 2 could be "I cannot believe this has happened to me... why have I been so fortunate!". Now I hear you say, when would these polar opposites really happen, well let me paint a picture.

You are out for a walk, it is a beautiful day and you are walking through the park. The birds are cheerily chirping, the kids are playing, there are couples enjoying a picnic...and then out of nowhere SPLAT! A massive bird poo lands on your shoulder! Options are, response 1 "I cannot believe this has happened to me... why is it always me that bad things happen to? Surely the bird could have done this somewhere else, I'm so unlucky!" while response 2 could be "I cannot believe this has happened to me... time to go and chance my luck on a lottery ticket! Maybe today really could be my lucky day!".

So which of those responses would you choose? Which one would allow you to feel a moment of happiness? If it really is your responsibility to choose your happiness through your own actions, then what is stopping you?