Defining Happiness and Building Resilience

I’ve been thinking a lot about happiness recently. And in all my reflection and experience I have come to some conclusions about what it is and how we experience it. First of all, because I’ve been asked before, yes I believe happiness is a real thing that people feel. I believe that a lot of people have profound moments of happiness. But I also think we aren’t always good at recognizing it. Often the associations or images we attach to ‘happiness’ are very different from real-time, lived experiences of it. So I wanted to clear some of that up here. I think happiness requires attention to past present, and future:

Past

• Satisfaction with the past

• Rewriting the story of how we became who we are to reflect a sense of resilience, gratitude, or acceptance

• Making peace with the things that happened outside of our control so we can better focus on the present and future

• Reconciliation with the past self 

• Creating room for self-compassion, toleration for imperfection and unfinished work

• Preserving fond memories

Present 

• Recognizing and appreciating temporary moments of pleasure, joy, or contentment

• Acceptance that these moments are often short and imperfect

• Gratitude for positive opportunities

• Working to find and take advantage of said opportunities

• Taking care of ourselves so we maximise our capacity for pleasure, joy, and contentment, as well as our ability to work on our perceptions of the past and future

Future

• Having hope for the future and things to look forward to

• Cultivating a vision of the future that is exciting and worthwhile

• And nurturing enough self-efficacy to support the confidence necessary to achieve it

Intentionality

Practicing good mental health is like learning a new language: it requires daily intentional effort. A lot of people get stuck in building good mental health practices because they don’t realize the level of intentionality it requires. I’m not saying you have to be in top form every second of every day. But people are happiest when a little bit of time and attention is spent regularly on working towards the things they want. That includes relationships and careers, yes. These things contribute to our mental health via our sense of purpose, belonging, and values. But it also includes identifying and developing those values, our ideas about the future, a foundational understanding  about ourselves and each other. It means attending to identity and a sense of resilience. It’s about noticing how our beliefs manifest themselves and allowing for change when it’s appropriate. It means deciding when to let go, accept, walk away or do less just as much as it means stepping up or being proactive and planning for the future. But being intentional, picking a direction, requires knowing what you want. And a lot of people don’t know what they want.

‘What do I want?’ is a big question with no real equation or system available to help you find the answer. In truth, I think the answer is more instinctual than anything. Some people just know. Others need to reflect and explore their values, their histories, and their desires in order to come to an answer. But I believe anyone who is really having trouble with this question is getting stuck partly because the answer they really want simply isn’t realistic. This tends to look like one of three things. One is the ‘I want everything’ mindset. Tempting, but doomed to fail. People who try to have everything end up having a little bit of everything and having nothing completely. They spend a lot of time and energy on their various pursuits and achievements and are usually caught up in a burnout cycle. 

The second type that I know of is the ‘I want it to be easy’ mindset. These are people who have some notion of what they want out of life, what would make them happy, but are also aware of the sacrifices that that thing would require. It can be easy to fall into a pattern of resistance when trying to avoid the inevitable price that happiness has. This is where acceptance comes in. Acceptance that most things in life don’t come easy, that whatever terrible thing we’re imaging (ie. risk or failure or unhappiness) is likely already happening to us as we wait for the miracle to come around, and that the only alternative to actively participating in life is to be dragged along behind it without agency. Once we can sit more or less comfortably with these things, we can either decide that what we want is something different afterall, or that it’s worth the sacrifices that need to be made to get it.

I imagine too that there are people who get stuck in the ‘I don’t want anything’ headspace. I expect these people feel hopeless and overly tired. I guarantee they want something, but some experience or other has taught them that wanting things is pointless and leads to unnecessary disappointment, so they’re better off without. This type would require reconciliation with the past and practice setting realistic expectations. 

Starting small is hard for a lot of people, we learn that we have to want the big things, that to aim low is a kind of personal failure. But intentionality is all about experimentation and flexibility. Trying a thing to see how it goes and then trying something else. Intentionality doesn’t work when we try to apply it to big picture, indefinite, life changing choices. It’s not sustainable and it’s not satisfying. Intentionality means going one step at a time and changing course as you discover more of the path. It means taking breaks, going slow, and adapting along the way.

Balanced Belief systems

There are certain psychological elements that we can not survive without. One of them is connection and/or belonging. Another is a secure belief system. Without these things, or some alternative to temporarily act in their place, we often get depressed. And as we all know, depression can be risky indeed. Belief systems come in a lot of different forms: religion, corporate success, family values. Whatever it is doesn’t necessarily need to be articulated. But it needs to be secure enough to comfortably hold a sense of purpose and a way for meaning-making. If our existence feels pointless, we'll begin behaving as if it is. 

Functional belief systems usually touch on three levels of awareness: the cosmos ( cosmic powers or forces), people (human nature), and ourselves (identity). They also have a sense of balance to them to allow for absorption of both the ugly or sorrowful parts of human existence, and the more fulfilling and affection-worthy elements. Sometimes belief systems need to be explored and challenged. If we have internalized the idea that bad things happen to good people, for example, then that may be true, but on its own it serves to make us miserable, not happy. This kind of belief needs to be expanded and complicated. For example: bad things and good things may happen to all people, but what’s more important is how we respond. A healthy belief system has space for both uncertainty and certainty, for both positivity and negativity, for both suffering and resilience. This may seem contradictory, but we and our lives are contradictory by nature.

Cultivating Hope and Reconciling Grief

I know most people want happiness and hope to occur naturally. In fact, I think this is considered by many an inherent characteristic of those things that make life worth living - that they don’t take too much effort. I am learning the opposite is actually true. Without effort and focus (and knowing what you want) it is easy to lose all sense of hope and stop believing in happiness. This has happened to me and many people I know. Hope and happiness require effort, these moments need to be sought out without too many qualifiers. If we start thinking that good things don’t count if they are tainted or associated with the less happy elements of life, we will very quickly run out of options. When we are open to and enthusiastic about hope and happiness, in my experience, they can be found in abundance.

I went through a period of time where I didn't believe in happiness. I did not believe in hope for the future or life that's worthwhile. But what happened is, I started getting more sleep. I did my self care and gave myself time. And I made myself stop thinking about the future in purely negative terms. I started looking for evidence of the things that I didn't believe in.

And I found them. They were there to be found: moments of happiness. Deep satisfaction and a belief that the rest of my life would be more good than bad. I discovered within myself the capacity to have hope about the future without evidence. The capacity for faith. And that was scary, actually. To name and acknowledge it, because the risk of disappointment is always present. And I am still unsure I can tolerate it.

I wonder if grief closes the door, for a time, to deep joy. And if this is what it feels like when it opens again. To be in my body viscerally and positively. To gain something back without realizing you'd lost it. All change is loss and all loss is grief, and so the potential for grief is constant. But then again, the potential for joy is constant too. We all go through periods of life where we fall more on one side of the spectrum than the other. And that's probably natural - probably it’s important that we suffer a little. But to be aware of where we sit and where we want to go could offer us the control and direction we are so often missing. To be in grief or in joy knowingly and appreciatively is a very different thing then being lost in them.

Supporting Sources

Abramson, January 1st, 2024. Hope as the Antidote. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/01/trends-hope-greater-meaning-life

Cohen, May 20, 2024. Living Intentionally and its Impact. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/be-the-sun-not-the-salt/202405/living-intentionally-and-its-impact

Cultivating Happiness, January 16, 2025. HelpGuide.org. https://www.helpguide.org/mental-health/wellbeing/cultivating-happiness

Lusk, March 4th, 2025. How to Cultivate Active, Sustainable Hope. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/threshold/202503/how-to-cultivate-active-sustainable-hope

Tartakovsky, February 27, 2025. Intentional Living: Tips to be Purposeful in Everything you do. Psych Central. https://psychcentral.com/health/intentional-living#how-to-be-intentional

The Connection Between Beliefs and Mental Health, Road to Resolutions, PLLC. https://road2resolutions.com/the-connection-between-beliefs-and-mental-health/

The Power of Hope and Your Mental Health, January 25th, 2023. The dot. https://www.thedotcanada.ca/blog-mental-health-ontario-canada/the-power-of-hope-and-mental-health/