The key to achieving happiness is realising that we can choose our own state of mind. And it is the quality of our state of mind that determines the quality of our lifetime experience on this Earth.

We may only be half aware of it, but we constantly choose our state of mind, such as with drink or drugs, going to a tearful movie or a comedy night.

What may be less obvious, regarding states of mind that we regard as undesirable such as anger or sadness, is that we choose those as well. With feelings like anger it is important to understand where they exist, and come from. Do they exist in the outside world? Are they caused by other people?

If we think about the physical aspects of what happens when anger occurs neither of these make sense. Let's say someone calls us an idiot and we get angry. What is actually happening is that sound waves ripple out from one person to another. Can mere sound waves cause an emotion in the mind of another? That doesn't really seem logical. It is more reasonable to accept that we interpret the sound waves in a certain way and due to certain personal sensitivities; the anger is internally induced. Once we are aware that we generate such emotions ourselves it becomes clearer to understand that we can decide whether or not we want to respond with those, negative, emotions.

All emotions are personal and internal to ourselves. Which is why different people react in different ways to the same events. For example, with the publication of the Danish cartoons depicting Mohammed a small minority of Muslims reacted in a very aggressive manner not because of the physical effects of the cartoons, but because of the internal sensitivities of their minds. In other words, they (unconsciously) chose to react in the way they did.

We have control over our own emotions and state of mind.