I'm seeing a lot of comments playing devil's advocate by claiming that happiness is a choice. That's true! But it doesn't contradict the article.
What we call 'happiness' or 'sadness' is just some combination of the thousands of automatic judgements we've made about the world recently. All of these judgments (choices) are themselves composed of smaller judgements (this is good, this is bad). We try not to be 'judgemental', and I know what people mean when they say that, but I'd say it is in fact probably all we can do. I mean, technically speaking.
You can zoom in to examine the tiny choices (to some extent), and you can zoom out so that sometimes happiness looks for all the world like a single big ol' choice. I think this is what people call 'clarity', and I think I've experienced it once or twice.
But actually, for most of us, most of the time, happiness is the result of all these tiny, composable, semi-automatic judgements about the world, and we have to keep on making these choices, over and over and over again as we think. And exercising, meditating, getting enough sleep, spending quality time with other humans, etc. - this stuff really will help us improve our semi-automatic judgements so that we are saying "this is good...this is good..." slightly more often than before.
What we call 'happiness' or 'sadness' is just some combination of the thousands of automatic judgements we've made about the world recently. All of these judgments (choices) are themselves composed of smaller judgements (this is good, this is bad). We try not to be 'judgemental', and I know what people mean when they say that, but I'd say it is in fact probably all we can do. I mean, technically speaking.
You can zoom in to examine the tiny choices (to some extent), and you can zoom out so that sometimes happiness looks for all the world like a single big ol' choice. I think this is what people call 'clarity', and I think I've experienced it once or twice.
But actually, for most of us, most of the time, happiness is the result of all these tiny, composable, semi-automatic judgements about the world, and we have to keep on making these choices, over and over and over again as we think. And exercising, meditating, getting enough sleep, spending quality time with other humans, etc. - this stuff really will help us improve our semi-automatic judgements so that we are saying "this is good...this is good..." slightly more often than before.
[slight edits for clarity]