If you watch the cartoonish commercials on TV about depression and anti-depressants, you would think that that the molecule known as serotonin is a biochemical of bliss and if you’re feeling crappy, you can just take a medicine that bumps up its effects and voilà, you’ll be happy! On the other hand, if you go to websites like “SSRI stories.com,” which is filled with nightmarish tales about violent behavior, assaults, suicides, suicidal thoughts, murders, and school shootings all associated with SSRIs; or if you read the papers and listen to conspiracy theorists, it’s almost impossible not to be impressed by the link between all of this unpleasantness and drugs that affect serotonin levels. Even the package insert that comes with Prozac and Effexor and Zoloft and other SSRIs pharmaceuticals contain warnings from the purveyors of these poisons about side effects of self-harm and savagery that one would never think would be associated with a drug that’s supposed to make you jump for joy.

So which is it, hormone of happy or hormone of horror? If serotonin is indeed the chemical of calm that you hear about on commercials and if SSRI drugs are indeed the glee-inducing, depression-fighting drugs that your doctor tells you they are, why is that Lilly and Pfizer and all the other manufacturers of these substances are warning patients about side effects like suicide and violent and aggressive behavior?

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” 
―Confucius

We humans make things so complicated.

Take the subject of happiness, which can be as elusive as it is desirable. According to an online Harris Poll of 2,345 U.S. adults, only one in three Americans say they’re ‘very happy’, as has been the trend since 2009.

Even worse, our drive to be happy may interfere with achieving the goal. When we strongly want to be happy we may create a standard that can’t be met. Thinking: “I must always be happy” canresult in disappointment and guilt, which ironically can prevent the happiness we so desire.

According to happiness researcher Brett Q. Ford of the University of California at Berkeley, “Part of the reason that wanting to be happy backfires in the U.S. is that people get down on themselves. Also, wanting happiness can make you self-focused and disengaged, and then you’re kind of lonely, and that interferes with feeling happy, too.”

Yet, as it turns out, happiness is built into us and we all have access to it, all the time, at any time. The problem is we believe that happiness is the result of an outward focus. The fact escapes us that happiness is an inner condition that involves our thoughts, feelings and biochemistry, which are obviously INSIDE us.

Once we understand the internal nature of the condition we can take this happiness horse by the reins and be happy whenever we like.

Instantly!

Here’s the secret, and don’t be deceived by its utter simplicity.

If you want to be happy all the time: find something to be happy about all the time!

At any given moment, you can choose dozens of things to be happy about. No matter how bad things seem to be, like the man who complained about having no shoes, until he saw another man with no legs, there is always something we can be happy about – a warm bed, a friend, spouse, lover, child, pet, job, not being in pain, eyesight, hearing, hands, feet, fingers, toes, ability to walk, no deformities etc.

The bad news: our brains are hard-wired for survival which is the primal imperative. Thus, the default perspective of the human brain is on what’s wrong, not what’s right. After all, what’s wrong can kill you, what’s right probably won’t.