Sonja Lyubomirsky: "We let people define happiness for themselves. There's no happiness thermometer. No one else can tell you how happy you are. It;s a subjective phenomenon. No one but you knows, or should tell you, how happy you truly are."
People can't tell you that your happy, because sometimes they don't know what makes you happy. For me wrestling makes me happy, just wrestling. Sure winning makes me happy too but its just icing on the cake. What really makes me the happiest is wrestling with my friends during open mat. There is no pressure to win or any one watching it's just for fun. Most people don't know that about me they think I wrestle just because I'm good but that is not the case. I wasn't good at wrestling until about 6th or 7th grade but i loved the sport and it made me happy so I kept with it. Now I am wrestling in college and placed 7th at state my senior year of high school just because wrestling makes me happy.
People can't tell you when to be happy or how to become happy you have to find it for yourself.
Great quote to pick out, Gable. I think you might be interested in Csikszentmihalyi's work on "flow." It sounds like you are experiencing a flow state when you wrestle. People experience flow when they are enjoying themselves so much that they forget about what time it is, if they are winning or not, etc. They get "lost" in the activity, but in a good way. Nothing else matters when they are doing it. Maybe this could be a topic for your paper later this term.
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