Happiness isn’t something that happens to you—it’s something you decide.
Research confirms what high-performing leaders already know: while genetics and life circumstances play a role, nearly 40% of your happiness is driven by intentional choices—how you think, what meaning you assign to events, and how you engage with your work and the people around you.
This week’s video challenges the dangerous myth that happiness arrives with a raise, a promotion, or easier coworkers. It doesn’t. Happiness isn’t circumstantial—it’s constructed.
You’ll discover three insights every leader needs to internalize:
– Most of life’s events are neutral. You decide whether they become fuel or friction.
– Happy people don’t just feel better—they earn more, perform better, and experience greater fulfillment.
– Meaningful work isn’t found. It’s created—by making others’ lives better.
When leaders stop outsourcing happiness to circumstances and start owning their mindset, cultures shift. Performance rises. Engagement follows.
If you want more energy, better results, and a team that shows up differently—start with how meaning is created every single day.
Make your work matter. Make your mindset intentional.
Watch now.
You are as happy as you decide to be.
Every business, every school, every organization has them—the people who are crappy. I spotted one the other day. Posted on her desk area was a piece of paper with a lovely little message that made her life view very clear. It said, and I quote, Life sucks and then you die.
My goodness. Let me rush right home and cross-stitch that one on a pillow.
That pretty much tells it all. No raise, no opportunity to work on a fulfilling project, no promotion, no removal of other people who aren’t performing that get in her way would solve her internal unhappiness that she’s committed herself to.
Safe bet her life will be even more miserable next year.
And the latest findings on happiness? The University of California and Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness, says that genes predetermine half of a person’s happiness. That’s a lot—but that’s not all.
Ten percent of a person’s happiness is based on that person’s life circumstances: their job, their kid’s behavior, whether their spouse gives them a foot massage or not. Okay, so now you know what makes me happy—but I digress.
That leaves forty percent of a person’s happiness based on something they can influence: the intentional activities and thoughts that you choose that either increase or decrease happiness.
We have the opportunity to control forty percent of our happiness. So if you’re busily blaming life circumstances, stuff a sock in it. Life circumstances are not what are making you unhappy.
You make you unhappy.
Now, what about happiness and money? Will money make you happy?
More than two hundred research studies show that money does not make people happy. Surprised? However, research shows that people who are happy do earn more money—more than seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars in their lifetime when compared to those who aren’t happy.
So maybe money doesn’t buy happiness, but happiness apparently does buy money.
These studies have found that happy people also have more relaxed and peaceful lives. They’re more fulfilled. Go figure. These darn happy people—they have it all.
What about the antithesis of happiness? According to statistics, one out of five women in America are on antidepressants. More than one hundred and eighteen million prescriptions for antidepressants were written last year. Now that’s a little depressing.
While researchers are finding that a fair amount of depression has to do with the influence of unhealthy foods on brain chemistry, the astonishing fact is that a good share of our unhappiness has to do with how we think—how we frame events and conversations in our lives.
It is how you interpret your events, people, and things on a daily basis that makes a difference.
Is a rainy day a good thing or is it a bad thing? It’s neither. It is neutral. You decide if it’s a good or bad thing—and you decide that about all the things in your life. That is what determines a fair amount of your mental state of happiness.
When you interpret things as good instead of bad, that changes the dendrites in your brain. So suddenly your brain finds it easier to interpret things as good. You have rewired your brain for happiness.
When we become clear that most of life’s events are neutral and waiting for us to attach meaning, we regain our ability to find happiness.
According to experts, what is one of the best ways to create happiness? Find meaningful work.
Even better, make your work meaningful. So get about making the lives of your customers and coworkers better—and you may be amazed how you pick up a skip in your step.