Similarly, neuroscience research shows that when we do nice things for others, our brains light up in areas associated with pleasure and reward.
And research shows that writing a “gratitude letter” to someone you’ve never properly thanked brings a major boost of happiness. People who keep “ gratitude journals” feel more optimism and greater satisfaction with their lives. Give thanks: Research by Michael McCullough, Robert Emmons, Lyubomirsky, and others has revealed the power of simply counting our blessings on a regular basis.Research suggests that our ability to savor impacts how much of a mood boost we get from happy events. Practice savoring, the art of maintaining and deepening positive feelings by becoming more aware of them.Pursue happiness indirectly: Rather than constantly monitoring your emotions and striving to feel better, try to organize your daily life around activities that are naturally enjoyable-including some of the ones below.Studies show that close relationships, including romantic relationships, are especially important, suggesting we should make time for those closest to us-people in whom we can confide and who’ll support us when we’re down. Build relationships: Perhaps the dominant finding from happiness research is that social connections are key to happiness.Time Capsule: Create a collection of positive experiences to surprise your future self.Īnd here are some of the keys to happiness Lyubomirsky and other researchers have identified.Gift of Time: Invest in your relationships by spending quality time with people you care about.Meaningful Photos: Photograph, then write about, things that are meaningful to you.Mental Subtraction of Positive Events: Visualize what your life would be like without the good things you have.Best Possible Self for Relationships: Imagine your relationship going as well as it possibly could.Best Possible Self: Imagine your life going as well as it possibly could, then write about this best possible future.
Awe Narrative: Recall and describe a time when you experienced awe.Here are some specific, science-based activities for cultivating happiness on our new site Greater Good in Action: īased on her research, Lyubomirsky has concluded that roughly 50 percent of happiness is determined by our genes and 10 percent by our life circumstance, but 40 percent depends on our daily activities. That definition resonates with us here at Greater Good: It captures the fleeting positive emotions that come with happiness, along with a deeper sense of meaning and purpose in life-and suggests how these emotions and sense of meaning reinforce one another. In her 2007 book The How of Happiness, positive psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky elaborates, describing happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.” Many of them use the term interchangeably with “subjective well-being,” which they measure by simply asking people to report how satisfied they feel with their own lives and how much positive and negative emotion they’re experiencing. Most of us probably don’t believe we need a formal definition of happiness we know it when we feel it, and we often use the term to describe a range of positive emotions, including joy, pride, contentment, and gratitude.īut to understand the causes and effects of happiness, researchers first need to define it.
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