If Happiness is a Choice Why Are So Many People Miserable?

When I ask women what they want most, the answer is often beautifully simple: they want to be happy. Not necessarily wildly successful, constantly cheerful, or living some glossy version of a life that looks good from the outside. Just happy. Peaceful in their own skin. More satisfied with their days. Less exhausted by their own thoughts. More able to love the life they’re actually living.

And while I do believe that happiness is a choice, I also know it is not as simple as deciding to wake up tomorrow and feel better. If it were that easy, more people would do it. No one would stay miserable out of stubbornness. No one would wrestle with grief, depression, disappointment, resentment, exhaustion, or that quiet ache of wanting more while also feeling guilty for not being grateful enough.

This question has always been at the heart of my work around loving your life, because happiness is not about pretending everything is perfect. It’s about understanding what supports you, what drains you, what keeps you stuck, and what helps you feel more present, nourished, and honest inside the life you already have.

Life is more complicated than a cheerful little slogan. Still, I don’t believe happiness is impossible. I don’t believe wanting to be happy is shallow or selfish or useless. In fact, I believe the desire to be happy is often at the heart of learning to love your life. But if you want happiness to become a choice you are actually able to make, it helps to understand what may be standing in the way, what happiness really means, and what small, honest changes can make it more available in your daily life.

Is happiness an emotion?

Happiness is an emotion, but not something that can be so easily described as such. Rather, it’s an overarching description of positive or pleasant emotions that can range from joy to elation to even simple contentment. It’s important to know this in the context of exploring if happiness is a choice. Because if you aren’t happy, learning to identify every emotion exactly is the key to disentangling that.

It’s important that you know that emotions are fleeting. Some last longer than others, but it’s practically impossible to maintain the experience of a single emotion or feeling state an entire day. The same goes for any emotion – good or bad – pleasant or unpleasant. Personally, I experience a positive emotion I identify as a shade of happiness every day. Even though it doesn’t last ALL day.

So, part of being able to choose to be happy is to learn to identify and acknowledge the wide range of emotions that can signal overall happiness and satisfaction with your life. And recognizing that you can experience joy, delight, elation, giddiness, and contentment throughout your day when you live with awareness.

Why happiness is NOT a choice for everyone.

Now that you know that happiness is an overall arching description for many emotions, it is important to note that happiness is not a choice for every single person. Some folks are incapable of accessing any range of emotion that is part of the happiness spectrum. And here’s who that applies to.

If you have been diagnosed with clinical depression (or other mental health issues), then you likely can’t access emotions that you see as happy. At least not without the help of therapy and/or medication. This is why diagnosing mental health issues is critical. Because you can’t just “think” your way out of your illness. However, it’s worth noting that modern medicine can help you.

Even without a specific diagnosis of depression, there are other cases where it’s hard to choose happiness. For example, If you are living in an abusive situation it can be hard to make decisions beyond simple survival. You may also find it practically impossible to access any shade of happiness if you are lost in the mires of grief or serious illness. And in cases of severe stress, being able to experience an inkling of positive emotions. Or maybe you feel invisible in the fabric of your very life. Those are all challenging experiences.

This is not to say that it’s a lost cause.

That’s because awareness is golden. Knowledge is power. And all that knowledge and awareness allows you to make better decisions to experience what you desire.

THAT, my dear, is super important, because a 2017 study found that people reported greater happiness and life satisfaction when they were able to experience the emotions they wanted to feel, even when those emotions weren’t always traditionally “positive.” In other words, happiness isn’t only about chasing joy or pretending difficult emotions don’t exist. It’s also about knowing how you truly want to feel, learning to identify your emotions honestly, and making choices that help your emotional life feel more aligned with who you are and what matters to you.

What “Happiness as a Choice” Really Means

When I say happiness is a choice, I don’t mean you can simply decide to feel joyful on command. That’s not how real life works, and it’s certainly not how real emotions work. You can’t gratitude-journal your way out of grief in an afternoon, slap a positive thought over heartbreak, or pretend exhaustion is enlightenment just because you’d rather be the kind of woman who “chooses joy.”

That’s not choosing happiness. That’s denying the truth of your actual life.

To me, choosing happiness is less about forcing an emotion and more about choosing the conditions that make happiness more available. Research on happiness and intentional positive activities supports this distinction, suggesting that practices such as gratitude and optimism can support well-being when a person wants to become happier and continues to invest effort over time.

That matters, because happiness is rarely a single grand decision.

It’s choosing to notice what is beautiful, even when life is complicated. It’s choosing to tend your body, your home, your relationships, your routines, your thoughts, and your nervous system in ways that support a more nourishing life. It’s choosing, when you can, to stop feeding the stories, habits, and patterns that keep you feeling miserable.

And sometimes the choice is smaller than we want it to be. It might be choosing to go outside for ten minutes. Choosing to eat something that supports your body. Choosing to ask for help. Choosing to tell the truth in your journal instead of pretending everything is fine. Choosing not to spend the entire evening doomscrolling. Choosing to notice the one good thing tucked inside an otherwise ordinary day.

That may not sound dramatic, but those small choices matter. They create the environment where contentment, delight, hope, peace, pleasure, and joy have a better chance of finding you. And darling, for most of us, that’s where happiness begins: not as a lightning strike, but as a practice of making room for what is good.

What are other causes of not being able to choose happiness?

So, what if you’re miserable, yet don’t have depression? What if you’re more often dissatisfied than not, yet live in a safe home with a fairly low stress level? What if you simply feel as if you can’t be happy because you WANT more for your life? And the guilt of seeming ungrateful for all your blessings makes you feel as if asking for more is “greedy”?

It’s possible you’re addicted to negativity. According to the book Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson, our brains are wired to look for the bad. Hanson says that the brain is like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for good ones. This negativity bias causes the brain to react intensively to bad news compared to how the brain responds to good news.

And unfortunately, this becomes habit. An addiction of sorts. And like all addictions, change demands you decide you’re no longer going to live a particular way.

That doesn’t mean you can’t change that, though. But we can counter the brain’s negativity bias — which triggers us to form stronger bad memories than good ones — by appreciating and lingering on those tiny, positive moments. Kind of like soaking your brain in pleasant, positive emotions.

This is why gratitude works on the brain. You’re rinsing and repeating good experiences for your brain.

How do you choose to be happy?

Making the decision to be happy, or at least happier, matters. Not because you can command yourself into joy, but because intention changes what you begin to notice, practice, and make room for. When you decide you’re willing to choose happiness where you can, you begin looking for evidence that happiness is still available to you, even in small, ordinary ways.

That matters because once you decide you’re willing to choose happiness, you begin looking for evidence that happiness is available to you. In Hardwiring Happiness, Rick Hanson writes, “We’re surrounded by opportunities — 10 seconds here or 20 seconds there — to just register useful experiences and learn from them. People don’t do that when they could.” Those small moments may not look impressive from the outside, but noticing them helps your brain recognize that happiness doesn’t have to arrive as a huge life event. Sometimes it appears as a good cup of coffee, a song you love, a quiet morning, or the relief of finishing one small thing.

Small Choices Make Happiness More Available

This is why a gratitude practice can be so powerful. Gratitude asks you to actively look for the good inside your average, ordinary days. Not because everything is perfect, and not because you’re pretending hard things don’t exist, but because your brain needs help registering what is steady, beautiful, kind, useful, or satisfying.

You can also set yourself up to experience more positive emotions by choosing simple actions that make those feelings easier to access. Dancing in the kitchen, listening to happy music, playing with a pet, stepping outside for fresh air, texting someone you love, or making your space a little more beautiful can all help shift your emotional state. These aren’t magic cures, but they are small invitations to pleasure, connection, movement, and delight.

Accomplishment matters, too. Most of us feel better when we can point to something and say, “I did that.” When you’ve decided you want to be happier, choosing one meaningful task each day can help you feel more capable and proud of yourself. And because the way your morning begins can set the tone for the rest of the day, a simple, meaningful morning routine can help you begin on your own terms instead of feeling hijacked before you’ve even had your coffee.

What is the true key to happiness?

When you decide that you’re going to do your best to see happiness as a choice, you open the door to a more honest kind of happiness. Not the performative kind. Not the brittle kind that demands you smile through pain, deny your needs, or pretend your life is easier than it is. The kind I’m talking about begins with telling the truth.

That means defining what happiness actually means for you. Not what Instagram says it should look like. Not what your mother, your neighbor, your old church friend, or some chirpy productivity expert insists should make you grateful. What does happiness feel like in your body? What helps you feel peaceful, satisfied, connected, steady, delighted, proud, nourished, or at home in your own life?

Once you know that, you can begin making choices that support those feelings more often. You can notice what drains you and what restores you. You can stop waiting for happiness to arrive fully formed and begin creating small openings for it in your ordinary days.

Happiness is a choice that many of us can make, but it is rarely a single grand decision. More often, it’s a series of small, honest choices that help you build a life that feels more loving, more nourishing, and more true. And sometimes, my dear, that means doing the work to clear the path so happiness has somewhere to land.