Life and liberty aside, what really makes people happy? Using a facial recognition task throughout the course of a day, researchers studied how sensitive participants were to positive and negative emotions. Volunteering was still widespread. We all have a happiness baseline, which is our general long-term happiness. 6. The Science of Happiness, the scientific study of “what makes happy people happy,” was arguably launched by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi in the late 1980’s. Social time is highly valuable when it comes to improving our happiness, even for introverts. Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful: 93 percent of the men who were thriving at age 65 had been close to a brother or sister when younger. ;). Check out the 7 minute workout mentioned in The New York Times. According to The Art of Manliness, having a long commute is something we often fail to realize will affect us so dramatically: ... while many voluntary conditions don't affect our happiness in the long term because we acclimate to them, people never get accustomed to their daily slog to work because sometimes the traffic is awful and sometimes it's not. Results indicated that writing letters of gratitude increased participants' happiness and life satisfaction while decreasing depressive symptoms. The biggest shock, though, came from the exercise group: Their relapse rate was only 9 percent. But workers who smile as a result of cultivating positive thoughts--such as a tropical vacation or a child's recital--improve their mood and withdraw less. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine. Get Outside More: Happiness is Maximized at 57°. Try them all. The Terman study, covered in The Longevity Project, found that relationships and how we help others were important factors in living long, happy lives: We figured that if a Terman participant sincerely felt that he or she had friends and relatives to count on when having a hard time then that person would be healthier. In fact, research by Dr. Happiness aka Ed Diener has found that even after such drastic life changes such as winning the lottery and being paralyzed, happiness will eventually return back to baseline. You don't have to be depressed to benefit from exercise, though. Of course it's important to practice "real smiles" where you use your eye sockets. A portion of our happiness is determined by our genetics (but there’s still plenty of room for attitude adjustments and happiness-boosting exercises!). This is pretty good news for those of us who are worried about fitting new habits into our already-busy schedules. It turns out it's also useful for improving your happiness: In one study, a research team from Massachusetts General Hospital looked at the brain scans of 16 people before and after they participated in an eight-week course in mindfulness meditation. Of course, how well (and how long) you sleep will probably affect how you feel when you wake up, which can make a difference to your whole day. The Journal of Happiness studies published a study that used letters of gratitude to test how being grateful can affect our levels of happiness: Participants included 219 men and women who wrote three letters of gratitude over a 3 week period. Meditation is often touted as an important habit for improving focus, clarity, and attention span, as well as helping to keep you calm. Of those who had taken the medication alone, 38 percent had slipped back into depression. And people with stronger social ties are generally happier.” Think exercise is something you don't have time for? In fact, 100 hours per year (or two hours per week) is the optimal time we should dedicate to helping others in order to enrich our lives. We all want to be happy. When this idea was tested by Johnson et al. The fact that we can actually alter our brain structure through mediation is most surprising to me and somewhat reassuring that however we feel and think today isn't permanent. Even forcing a smile when we don't feel like it is enough to lift our mood slightly (this is one example of embodied cognition). What I’m saying is to find out what you love to do, what makes you happy and go there. H = S (Setpoint) + C (Circumstances) + V (Voluntary Activities). So we could increase our annual income by hundreds of thousands of dollars and still not be as happy as we would if we increased the strength of our social relationships. No, I’m not saying “place” as in popping to your local bar or restaurant and gorging yourself on your favorite drinks or food. The connection between productivity and temperature is another topic we've talked about more here. Early mood was linked to their perceptions of customers and to how they reacted to customers' moods. In this video Dr. Jennifer Aaker gives us a brief glimpse at what makes us happy, and what doesn’t make us as happy as we might think. In NutureShock, Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman explain how sleep affects positivity: Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories gets processed by the hippocampus. Czikszentmihalyi pioneered the “experience sampling method” to discover what he called the “psychology of optimal experience,” and specifically, the experience of Flow. What this means is that others are born, well, “less happy” than others. Move Closer to Work: A Short Commute is Worth More Than a Big House. Spend More Time With Friends/Family: Money Can't Buy You Happiness. Staying in touch with friends and family is one of the top five regrets of the dying. 5. (2010), the results showed that participants who smiled performed better on attentional tasks which required seeing the whole forest rather than just the trees. Now, I hate to break it to you, but money won’t make you happy. Czikszentmihalyi pioneered the “experience sampling method” to discover what he called the “psychology of optimal experience,” and specifically, the experience of Flow. The results of this study are surprising: Although all three groups experienced similar improvements in their happiness levels early on, the follow-up assessments proved to be radically different: The groups were then tested six months later to assess their relapse rate. Now, it’s not that we particularly enjoy all of these activities for their own sake, even though we might (and for some, we certainly should), but that we want to create certain feelings: Passion, excitement, purpose, love, excitement, relief, or any other emotion that makes us, well, happy. One of the most counterintuitive pieces of advice I found is that to make yourself feel happier, you should help others. A smile is also a good way to reduce some of the pain we feel in troubling circumstances: Smiling is one way to reduce the distress caused by an upsetting situation. I think that last line is especially fascinating: Actual changes in income, on the other hand, buy very little happiness. Those who worked through the afternoon without taking a nap became more sensitive to negative emotions like fear and anger. Meditate: Rewire Your Brain for Happiness. So spending money on other people makes us happier than buying stuff for ourselves. Diener compared people on the Forbe’s list of wealthiest Americans with the general population, and found that they were only slightly happier than average, with 37% being less happy than the average American. A study in the Journal of Health Psychology found that people who exercised felt better about their bodies even when they saw no physical changes: Body weight, shape and body image were assessed in 16 males and 18 females before and after both 6 × 40 minutes exercising and 6 × 40 minutes reading. 10 Easy Activities Science Has Proven Will Make You Happier Today. After the vacation, happiness quickly dropped back to baseline levels for most people. This question takes us to the heart of Buddhist economics—to our true self. According to Achor, meditation can actually make you happier long-term: Studies show that in the minutes right after meditating, we experience feelings of calm and contentment, as well as heightened awareness and empathy. There’s still 50% of your happiness left. Exercise has such a profound effect on our happiness and well-being that it is an effective strategy for overcoming depression. Most species that have existed on planet Earth are extinct, including a number of early human species. We all have a genetic predisposition for happiness that accounts for roughly 50% of your happiness. Try one. This question takes us to the heart of Buddhist economics—to our true self. Your happy place is a place where you find peace, where you lose yourself and feel contented. What Life Lessons Does Willy Wonka Illustrate? Based on a comparison of the change in subjective well-being of these people and of people from the control group who had no change in their volunteer status, the hypothesis is supported that volunteering is rewarding in terms of higher life satisfaction.