How to be happier has always been a tricky thing to figure out, but in recent years, experts have researched at length just how to achieve the desired feeling.
August is National Happiness Happens Month, which serves as an annual reminder to celebrate what makes you happy. Over the past year we’ve talked to researchers about how to be happier and experience more joy in your daily life.
5 ways to improve your happiness
1. Treat your happiness like an investment portfolio
There are areas of your life that are within your control and can greatly contribute to your happiness, said Arthur C. Brooks, a happiness expert who teaches a course about it at Harvard University.
Brooks suggested viewing your happiness as an investment portfolio and investing in these four areas:
- Faith and life philosophy: Rely on a belief in something that allows you to make sense of the world, he said; it can be a religion or a spiritual practice.
- Family: Aim to build strong connections with members of your family.
- Friends and community: Build strong friendships with people you choose to spend time with.
- Meaningful work: Find a purpose in the work that you do daily, even if it doesn’t bring in the most money.
2. Focus on the No. 1 thing for happiness
If Laurie Santos, a professor who teaches the most popular class at Yale about the science of happiness, had to choose just one thing that you can do to feel happier today, “it would be engaging in social connection.”
“Every available study of happy people suggests that happy people are more social, they spend more time physically around other people, and they invest time in their friends and family members,” Santos told CNBC Make It in February.
Santos said you can maintain social connections in your life by intentionally setting time aside to develop relationships, being open to building connections with strangers and asking deeper questions during conversations with others.
3. You need these 3 types of friendships to truly feel happy
During Brooks’ Harvard happiness course, he shared the belief of the Greek philosopher Aristotle: Everyone should strive to have three different types of friendships in their life.
These three friendships can lead to true happiness, Brooks said:
- Utility friendships: “These relationships tend to be transactional in nature,” wrote Brooks in an article for “The Atlantic.” Think co-workers or people who you do business with, he added.
- Friendships based on pleasure: These relationships are “based on mutual admiration,” Brooks wrote. You likely have common interests or enjoy doing similar things.
- “Perfect” friendships: “By Aristotle’s standards, perfect friendships are those between people who have a mutual love for something that not only brings them together, but elevates their behavior to virtue. A relationship is perfect not when it is based on utility or pleasure, but when it is focused on improving the circumstance of the other person,” he wrote.
4. Try these 3 ways to ‘buy happiness’
While it’s generally understood that money can’t buy happiness, there are ways that you can use money to your advantage to improve your well-being, Brooks said.
In his free Harvard happiness course, Brooks shared that “no matter where we sit on the income scale, with a little knowledge and practice any of us can use money to bring more happiness.”
Here are a few ways that you can use money to increase your happiness:
- Spend money on experiences: Use your money on experiences that you know will bring you happiness like going on a vacation to a place you’ve always wanted to visit or seeing your favorite artist in concert.
- Buy extra time: Paying someone to handle tedious tasks that take up a lot of time like yard work or other chores allows you to spend more time on things you enjoy.
- Give money away to support others: Donating to causes that you believe in can increase the levels of happy chemicals in your brain like dopamine or oxytocin, Brooks noted.
5. Remember this fundamental rule about happiness
Though money can be used to increase your well-being, Brooks said, money alone can’t buy you sustained happiness.
Tami Muller, a happiness trainer and positive psychology coach, echoed Brooks’ sentiments, noting that chasing happiness by trying to achieve the most success isn’t the best way to attain happiness.
Muller encouraged people to remember this golden rule: “Happy people make more money, have better relationships [and] are more successful in life, not vice versa.” It’s actually happiness that causes people to succeed, she said.
“We really need to focus not on how to be more successful, but how we can be happier,” Muller said, “Then success will follow.”
And the tips that happiness experts have shared with Make It are a great place to start.
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