Finding happiness is, for most, the ultimate goal in life yet only a few ever find it. Comedian, Ray Romano, jokes that life peaks at three. It all goes downhill from there. At three, you have no worries and all it takes is candy to make you smile. While it is unlikely we will ever completely reclaim that gift of complete happiness that we took so for granted in our youth, wouldn’t you like to get as close as you can?
Scientists have spend some time studying what makes people happy and these “happyologists” (if I can call them that) can now tell us a thing or two about how we can make ourselves happier. And it is not as simple winning the lottery and marrying a supermodel. In this article, discover ten ways to get you dramatically closer to finding happiness.
1. Find Your Purpose
When our lives have a purpose, we have a reason to get up in the morning; a reason to face the day. We need something to work towards; something that makes putting up with it all worthwhile. Clearly defined achieveable goals play a big part in the amount of happiness we experience in life.
When psychologists have tested older people they have discovered that those who believe they exist for a purpose are much more successful at finding happiness. Almost 70% of people who felt their existence had a purpose, felt satisfied while in those who did not deem their life meaningful, 70% were said to feel unsettled about life.
So if you cannot write down, right now, what your goals are in life, have a good long think about it and figure it out. You’ll be happier once you figure out what you’re here for!
2. Don’t Let Others Set Your Goals
Continuing with the importance of goals, it is very important to set your own. Do not spend your life trying to achieve things that other people want for you, or that you want because you want others to think a certain way about you. Many people choose goals based on what other people think instead of thinking about what they really want, they would prefer to achieve things to impress others.
When it comes to what you do in your life and whether you ever get what you want, other people generally do not really care. They have their own problems to deal with. If you are lucky, you’ll have one or two people in your life who really genuinely care if you get what you want or not – and that’s if you’re really lucky. Most people don’t have anybody.
3. Watch Less TV
I can personally attest to this one! While there are a few TV shows I like, I watch very little television.
Most people watch some TV. But too many people watch too much TV. Tens of hours a week. Many families even go so far as to eat all their meals in front of the television. While TV is a wonderful invention, psychologists have discovered some fairly sinister things about the effects of watching too much TV.
Too much TV has been found to inhibit the ability of the viewer to carry on a conversation; increase our desire for more material possessions by 300%, and also reduce our personal contentment with life by 5% for every hour of the box that we watch.
4. Success Does Not Equal Stuff
This is a very important distinction and one that the vast majority of people do not make, prior to an event in their lives that causes them to realize what success really is. Material possessions will not make you any happier and “success”, however you choose to define it, cannot be gauged by the amount of money in your bank, the number of cars in your garage or the size of your wardrobe. Success is having what you want in life – the things that are really important.
Imagine you are going to die in one hour. List everything you have accomplished, everything you are proud of and everything that makes you happy. Is your car on the list? Your stereo? Your iPhone? I bet not. Because as long as you have enough to live comfortably (comfortably is for you to define), no amount of money is going to make you any happier.
4. Friends Beat Money
When we see the rich and famous, for some reason it seems natural to assume that because they have so much material wealth, they must be happy. Well, contrary to popular belief, if you really want to know how happy somebody is, ask them about their friends. There is a relativist rumour that happiness means different things to different people but in actual fact there seems to be one factor that is a very strong indicator of how happy a person will be: the number of friends they have and the closeness of those friendships (including family). Those with more friends and closer friends are consistently happier than those with less and distant friendships. Money… doesn’t mean shit.
5. Exercise
Drugs make you high, right? Well, there’s a simple and natural way to get your body to release chemicals into your blood that will make you high too – exercise.
Physical activity has been shown to increase self confidence, which in turn positively influences self evaluations. Regular exercise has been shown to directly increase happiness by 12% and can indirectly make a dramatic contribution to improving self-image.
6. Laugh
If you’ve ever heard the adage, “You have to laugh, or you’d cry”, then this is scientific proof ot it. Studies have shown that happiness is related to humour. Those who can laugh either at life itself or at jokes are more likely to feel happy and funnily enough, those who can laugh at silly humour and 33% more likely to feel happier still!
8. Don’t Let Your Entire Life Hinge On One Element
A table has four legs so that if you knock one of them off, the table can still stand up. If you build your life like a table, your happiness and general well being are more secure than if everything is hinged on one leg, like a bar stool. In other words, it is always better to have contingency plans for the major and important things in life.
9. Make Your Work A Calling
If you view your work as just a job that you do purely for financial gain, then it is preventing you from doing what you really want to be doing. If you see it as a calling, then it is no longer a daily sacrifice but an expression of you. If you do what you like, you will like what you do.
Men between the ages of 21 and 65 spend more time working than they spend doing anything else in their lives, even sleeping. Do you really want to spend over half of the time you are alive doing something that you do not enjoy?
10. Let Your Goals Guide You
If you have chosen reasonably achievable goals; things you really want to achieve, then follow them with all your heart and all the energy you have. Just the act of pursuing something you really want will make you feel happier about life, and the act of pursuing your goals will lead you into contact with others who want similar things to you. This will lead to more friends, which as we’ve already shown, will lead to a feeling of a more fulfilled life.
Those who have chosen goals that are actionable, meaningful and important to them and then set about pursuing them showed almost 30% more life satisfaction than those who did not.
In summary
Finding happiness seems to boil down to a few central themes: ambitions, relationships, laughter and an understanding of what success really means to you. Good luck finding happiness!
All “secrets” in this post are paraphrased from David Niven’s “100 Simple Secrets of Happy People“. If you enjoyed this article and would like to know another 90 ways in which you can further improve your quest for finding happiness, click the link above and pick up the book! It’s a steal!
