A lot of us share a common goal in this world. Everybody is on their own personal search for it and have their own vision of what it is to them, that goal is happiness. Haven’t you ever wondered about what happiness is and how is it that you can achieve the maximum level of it? We know there are people all over the world who believe they are the happiest they can be, but is what they see or feel as true happiness the same thing that the rest of us imagine it to be?

For thousands of years, people have studied depression and psychological illness. It was studied because psychologists believed that the study of depression would help cure it from people suffering with it. Now, modern science has begun to take a different approach to cure depression, and that is by examining happiness.

They started questioning what happiness exactly is in order to help people feel that emotion. Is it wealth/money that makes people happy? What exact roles do love, and intimacy play in happiness? Or what about all the other things that people around the world claimed to make them happy like their family, job, social status, health, and even doing good for others? I believe there are many factors that are in play. In my opinion, in order for us to figure out what the building blocks are of a life that flourishes with genuine happiness, we have to first begin by understanding and being aware of what it is.

A Better Understanding of Happiness Research

Happiness research was not a popular field in psychology before the 90s. Scientists and professors thought that it was too loose of a subject because it was something that seemed unmeasurable. They believed that happiness was something that would always be beyond their grasp. Then people began asking questions such as: why could they measure levels of depression, but not levels of happiness?

This sparked an interest to many scientists in the 90s. They came up with new methods of research and slowly started collecting data. Today there is an incredible amount of people who are interested in this topic. There are loads of articles and books being written about it and there is even a field of science called positive psychology, the focus of it is happiness.

There are countless test groups when it comes to happiness research. The reason people loved participating in these studies and learning about happiness so much was that scientists made a lot of them realize that they were looking at life the wrong way. They always thought that if they made more money, had a better intimate relationship, were liked by more people, and even had a better job, then and only then would they be happy. However, when it was flipped around and looked at another way; which was to first focus on understanding happiness and what it meant specifically to them and then worry about everything else. As a result, all their other goals in life became easier to achieve. They said that focusing on and prioritizing this emotion was able to improve their lives and all the lives around them.

What scientists did in order to achieve this accurate data was that they studied people’s moods over a long period of time, spanning from about 25 years to 40 years of data. They looked at random people from different parts of the world, studying who’s happy and who isn’t happy.

Now that we know the importance of learning about happiness. We can begin to look at what it exactly is.

Breaking Down What Happiness is

Genes – 50% of our happiness

Researchers have determined that about 50% of the difference in our happiness levels is affected by our genes. How that works is by looking at what they call a happiness set point, which we all have. Sonja Lyubomirsky a Psychologist professor who studies happiness gives a good description of what a happiness set point is in her book “The How of Happiness”:

“The set point for happiness is like the set point for weight. Some people are blessed with skinny dispositions. Even when they’re not trying, they easily maintain their weight. By contrast, others must work extraordinarily hard to keep their weight at a desirable level, and the moment they slack off even a bit, the pounds creep back on. So those of us with low happiness set points will have to work harder to achieve and maintain happiness, while those of us with high set points will find it easier to be happy under similar conditions.”

She is telling us that no matter whether good or bad things are happing to us, we all just tend to go back to that set point that we have.

One of the key factors to being happy is being able to recover from adversity more quickly. That means getting back to our set point or trying to go above it as quickly as possible. We shouldn’t believe that people who are happy don’t see any type of misfortune or difficulty in life. It’s just that those who always seem happier have higher set points and can come back to it more quickly than those with low ones. I think that this is a very important factor to understand.

Life Circumstances – 10% of our Happiness

Amazingly, the circumstances that we have in our lives like social status, job, how much money we have, where we live, or our age only accounts for 10% of the difference in our happiness. What stuns me about this is how we’re taught and told in this society to focus on those circumstances. It makes people believe that they are huge determinants to their happiness when they’re actually not. The happiness that we get from them is only a temporary feeling that goes away.

A problem that a lot of people have is that they believe happiness is a state of mind like for example the feeling we get when we enjoy a cold beer on a hot day. That feeling is pleasure and it can’t be confused with happiness. It is not something that can be gained or lost in a few hours like some sensations. Animals seek reproduction and pleasure. Once they have that, people tend to believe that the animal is happy, which could be true. But then we can look at the difference in what humans seek. Us humans have reasoning and are capable of acting according to our own morals. We take responsibility for the consequences from the choices we make.  For that reason is why pleasure alone cannot be a source of human happiness because pleasure is what animals seek and humans have higher capacities.

I have always disagreed that money is happiness, but most people think otherwise. I would like to shed some light on this factor because it is highly talked about in our society. How is that in the past 50 years America has doubled in wealth, but national surveys have shown that the happiness level of people hasn’t changed during the same duration of time? Even though people are living in bigger houses and having more cars, overall happiness hasn’t increased.

We live day to day believing that improving each one of these circumstances would make us feel happier. We prioritize most of our time to them and become blind to the mains things in life that do create a difference in our happiness.

Intentional Activities – 40% of our happiness

That main thing which consists of the other 40% of our happiness is what scientists call intentional activity and these are actions you choose to do on a regular basis in order to become happier. We can’t alter our happiness set points. We also can’t expect changes to our life circumstances to have a lasting impact on our happiness. However, we can increase and sustain our happiness through daily intentional activities.

4 Important Intentional Activites to be Aware of:

Focusing on intrinsic goals over extrinsic ones.

• Extrinsic goals are ones that are external and focused on rewards, praise, and getting stuff like money, image, and social status.
• Intrinsic goals are psychological needs that all of us have. These goals are focused on personal growth,
  relationships with friends/lover/family/yourself, health, and a sense to help the world and make it a better place.

I will be publishing a separate post talking about both of these goals.

Finding and Understanding Flow

Another very important component of intentional activities that affects happiness is what a lot of people call “being in the zone”. They are activities that make you feel in complete control of yourself and cause you to forget about all your problems in life. The past, present, future, none of it matters. The ego that we see in ourselves every day disappears and over time it builds a feeling in us that makes us see why life is worth living. Flow can happen anywhere; with your family, in personal time, and even at the job for some people. You just need to find out where flow can happen and try to keep it consistent.

We can look at people who seek extreme moments of flow.  People do dangerous activities like rock climbing, base jumping, or even balancing on a rope from building to building. They gain no status from it, and earn no money, but do it simply because they enjoy it.

Doing good for others and being concerned for the well-being of the world.

There isn’t only one type of good that we can do in this world, but an endless amount of it. The people who constantly throughout their whole lives do that good are the one who are happy.  Don’t expect that doing good for a small period of time will reward you with happiness. It needs to become a natural concern that doesn’t require pleasure as a reward for helping others. This could only be done with consistent practice throughout your life. In short what this means is that virtue isn’t happiness, but the exercise of virtue could actually be.

Practicing Compassion, Gratitude, Love, and Kindness

Researchers today have found that people who do a specific form of meditation on compassion, love, and kindness can increase their happiness levels to a greater extent and for longer periods of time. They achieved this answer by having people do very simple exercises;

• Two weeks of having compassion practice through meditation.
• Telling people to write down 5 things they are grateful for every night before going to sleep.
• Having people commit random acts of kindness on a daily basis. That could include something as easy as being aware of yourself holding the door open for someone.

The result that they got from these studies of kindness, compassion, and gratitude has proven to be a very effective method of becoming happier as a person. This shows how if everyone just learned the habits of a happy person, they would come one step closer to achieving genuine happiness. The only tricky part is finding out what these activities are and whether they work for you. Nevertheless, the practice of it is key.

Conclusion

Having all this information always leads me to one thing, that intentional activities are the building blocks to a happy life. Knowing how to prioritize these differences can lead to a happier life. We intentionally choose which goals to pursue, whether we should do good for the world, to do physical/mental activities, and knowing how to be grateful. With this research, I hope to put a better insight into happiness to anybody in this world who needs the advice.

In conclusion to my research we can look at compassion, gratitude, caring, and love which are all emotions that make a person think of things beyond themselves. Seeking only your own happiness won’t get you anywhere, but once you begin worrying about the wellbeing of the world, your life begins to grow. In society, if everyone just practiced creating happiness or having virtuous qualities for themselves. Society would really become a better place. The whole process of happiness is not to change your whole life up, but to remain authentic to yourself and see happiness as a skill that could be learned.