Also from the Happiness Project

"According to current research, in the determination of a person's level of happiness, genetics accounts for about 50 percent; life circumstances, such as age, gender, ethnicity, marital status, income, health, occupation, and religious affiliation, account for about 10 to 20 percent; and the remainder is a product  of how a person thinks or acts. In other words, people have an inborn disposition that's set within a certain range, but they can boost themselves to the top of their happiness range or push themselves down to the bottom of their happiness range by their actions. This finding confirmed my own life observations. It seems obvious that some people are more ebullient or melancholic than others and that, at the same time, people's decisions about how to live their lives also affect their happiness"
~The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

So having a complaining attitude or a negative outlook does more to influence your level of happiness than the things happening in your life. Its less what happens to you and more how you interpret it and how you choose to act because of it. That's powerful stuff if you think about it.

I'm currently babysitting a 10 year old boy. Some of the stuff he does drives me crazy. He is slow getting out the door. He always loses stuff and then asks me to find it for him. He hates going to bed. He burps at the table.

Yesterday morning I was really frustrated, he was definitely affecting my level of happiness. But when I stop to think about it, nothing he was doing was going to cause a global apocalypse. He was just moving slowly and I was just taking myself to seriously. I was taking his actions personally. I choose to look at it a certain way, and then my actions ended up being those based on unhappiness. In fact, if I sat back and thought about it, some of the stuff he is doing is really funny. Nothing he was doing was malicious. I could have still gotten him on the bus in time without getting myself frustrated.

Next time, I hope I'll be able to stop and think- after all, attitude is a choice.