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Daysi Rosales

Professor Corri Ditch

English 115

01 October 2019

Perspective or Environment Impacting Happiness

Happiness is believed to be caused by either an external space which is your environment

and can be transformed or your internal space changing your perspective on the situation. The

article “The Sources of Happiness” by His Holiness the Dalai Lama & Howard Cutler, and

“What Suffering Does” by David Brooks, and “How Happy Are You and Why?” by Sonja

Lyubomirsky all focus on the way people perceive situations that are stated to be happiness after

transforming your internal space. They explain that to achieve happiness you would have to

change the way you perceive situations and look at the positive sides of things. While on the

other hand, the article “Living with Less. A Lot Less” by Graham Hill points more towards the

environment one lives in, that is described to have a toll on your happiness which would be

described as your external space. These authors explain their perspective on whether they believe

if happiness is achieved through one’s external space or internal space. Each of these sides is

asserted with data, interviews or personal experiences to affirm their arguments, and explain

what happiness is and how one could change in their life to achieve it.

The internal space is described in the article “The Sources of Happiness” by His Holiness

the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler. Both authors illustrate the different methods of how they are

able to change their mindset in order to find happiness. The authors state “I seem to get more out

of each day than I ever did before, and on a moment to moment basis, I feel happier than I ever
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have…appreciate everything more”( Lama and Cutler, 21), illustrating that though bad things

happen in your life, you can always change your perspective and make them positive with the

way you perceive it. By simply thinking about how worse your situation could be and

appreciating you are not there, you will gain a higher level of satisfaction in where you are in

life. Then the idea of achieving “Inner Contentment” is when happiness is done when you are

setting goals for yourself. When you do this, you are achieving your goals, therefore, allowing

yourself to achieve what you put yourself up to. Both of these authors also state, “If you possess

this inner quality, a calmness of mind, a degree of stability within, then even if you lack various

external facilities that you would normally consider necessary for happiness, it is still possible to

live a happy and joyful life.” (Lama and Cutler, 25) In which the passage is used to assert how if

one possesses the inner quality and calmness of mind then it should not matter how your external

environment is, it is your internal mindset that is used to achieve a sense of happiness.

The article “What Suffering Does” by David Brooks also describes the importance of

internal behavior in achieving happiness. Throughout this article, David Brooks describes you

have to suffer in order to recreate who you are, the process of healing is coming out as someone

different than who you use to be. Suffering is inevitable but what comes out of it and what you

make of yourself all depends on your way of thinking. He states “Recovering from suffering is

not like recovering from a disease. Many people don't come out healed: they come out different.”

(Brooks, 287). Explaining that suffering is a way to change internally. If one puts their mind to it

they could change a situation in a positive way in which they will be able to achieve happiness.

After everything, you may think back and realize you are a strong person given that you

overcame all those hardships and start to appreciate the good things in your life. Achieving

happiness in his perspective does not come easy, you have to live through the hardships and
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learn to overcome them in order to get the positive side of things. Brooks states “The suffering

involved in their tasks becomes a fearful gift and a very different than that equal and other gifts,

happiness, conventionally defined.” (Brooks, 287) He asserts that suffering is just the bad that

one has to overcome in order to receive the gift that happiness is.

“How Happy Are You and Why?” by Sonja Lyubomirsky also supports the idea of

transforming your internal space to gain happiness. Lyubomirsky states that happiness is

determined “50% biologically (DNA), 10% circumstances, and 40% Intentional activity”

(Lyubomirsky,184), meaning that for the most part, our happiness depends on our biological

genes and the environment we are born in. Although 60% is set at birth for us she argues, “ a

genuine and abiding happiness is indeed within your reach, lying within the 40 percent of the

happiness pie chart that’s yours to guide.” Explaining that we have the power to determine our

happiness within that 40 percent section of intentional activity in the chart. Sonja Lyubomirsky

concludes her argument by stating, “The fountain of happiness could be found in how you

behave, what you think, and what goals you set every day of your life.”, which is stating that

one's happiness depends on the transformation one is willing to make to one’s internal space to

gain ourselves happiness.

On the other hand, “Living with Less. A Lot Less” by Graham Hill describes happiness

to be achieved by the transformation you make to your external space. Throughout the article,

the author describes living in a luxurious environment and realizing that it did not cause him

happiness but would cause him to be anxious and stressed. Hill states “I had a giant house

crammed with stuff...Somehow this stuff ended up running my life…” (Hill, 308) Graham Hill
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realized that his environment was impacting his happiness in a negative manner and decided to

change it. “It took 15 years, a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I

had collected and live a bigger, better, richer, life with less.” (Hill, 208) After leaving everything

behind and living a minimal life with nothing but his necessities. Hill realized happiness was not

based on materialistic matters. Given that he gave all his luxuries away and stayed with

necessities he states, “Intuitively, we know that the best stuff in life isn’t stuff at all, and that

relationships, experiences and meaningful work are the staples of a happy life.” (Hill, 311).

Meaning that although he has very little in his life, he is still living the best he could and making

the most out of his life. Demonstrating that happiness is not in what you have but in the way you

see what you have. Hill describes the start of this realization to be when he started transforming

his external space. You could be the richest and yet be sad, or like him, live with the bare

minimum, but live full of experiences and meaningful relationships. Hill transformed his external

space in order to achieve happiness.

All these authors describe happiness being based on the transformation of internal or

external spaces and explain how people could achieve happiness through it. The authors sustain

their arguments with interviews, research data, and personal experiences. His Holiness the Dalai

Lama & Howard Cutler, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and Brooks argue the idea of happiness is internal,

meaning that happiness is achieved when you have the correct mindset and perspective on

situations in your internal space. Meanwhile, on the other hand, Graham Hill argues that

achieving happiness takes more of an external space transformation. Transforming you internal

or your external spaces are transformations that one could do in order to achieve happiness.

According to some of these authors you would have to change the way one views the situation or

change your environment and surroundings.

Work Cited

Cutler, Howard &Lama, Dalai. “The Source of Happiness.” Pursuing Happiness: a

Bedfords Spotlight Reader, by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski

Bedford/St. Martin’s, a Macmillan Education Imprint, 2016. pp.21-33. Boston.

New York

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does”. Pursuing Happiness: a Bedford Spotlight

Reader, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski Bedford/St. Martin’s,

2016 pp.284-287

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?”. Pursuing Happiness: a Bedford

Spotlight Reader, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski Bedford/St.

Martin’s, 2016 pp.179-196.

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less A Lot Less” a Bedford Spotlight Reader, edited

by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016

pp.308-312.