What is “happiness” to you? It’s almost too big of a topic to even discuss. EVERYTHING boils down to it. All of our actions, decisions, emotions, reactions — all come down to a single idea: does this make me happy, or not?
I’ve scoured the academic happiness articles and found out how to stay positive and happy consistently by using 4 Happiness Habits.
What is Happiness to you?
Happiness and Positive Psychology
Positive psychology is the study of what we need to feel fulfilled. It’s the study of how we do this human experience thing to the best of our ability. It’s about achieving happiness as our life purpose, and that is completely the study of all.
But what goes into it?
40% of your happiness, of anybody’s happiness, comes down to your big decisions, daily choices, and consistent actions that you make in your life. The other 60% is genetic or based on external factors.
If this is true, a major component of how happy we are is totally under our control. I would argue that these numbers are debatable. It’s plausible to say we have even more control over our happiness than 40%.
We don’t currently, fully understand genetic expression — we have almost infinite possibilities contained in the combinations of our potential genes, our genetic outcomes are anything but written in stone.
Studies done on people that have encountered great hardships, and great blessings — like becoming paraplegic, or winning the lottery — show that after six months, their happiness levels pretty much bounce back to the same place that they were before the accident, or the windfall (PubMed).
Although external factors can be a wonderful benefit to your life or a great tragedy, their effects are temporary and other findings show dramatic, causal connections to the patterns in your life that you have complete control over.
What we’re going to talk about is how to affect your happiness levels permanently.
4 Keys to Happiness from Scientific Happiness Articles
There are four causal factors that scientists have found are linked to your overall sense of life satisfaction and happiness levels. We have hacked all four of these aspects into very simple habits that will deliver real happiness results to you simply and easily, which we will discuss later in the article.
- RELATIONSHIPS: The longest study on happiness ever done came out of Harvard. This study lasted 80 years. There are only 16 participants still alive today and they’re in their mid-90s. What the longest study on happiness found is that the number one correlative trait between all of the people that reported high levels of life satisfaction happiness is: relationship. Having loving, supportive relationships, regardless of any other circumstance, trumped every other factor to deliver true lasting happiness to these people.
- MONEY: Money can’t buy happiness, but having enough certainly can. The National Library of Science reported that happiness levels increased in direct correlation with how much money people made as it increased up to $75,000 a year. After that, the effect of having money on happiness was capped out, leaving scientists with the understanding that having enough money is necessary to your overall happiness but having more than enough doesn’t have any correlative to how happy you are.
- EXERCISE: The most powerful indicator of mental health is exercise. Exercise increases your mood. They’re not quite sure why, but it does. One of the most interesting factors found in the exercise studies is that mood isn’t all that exercise benefits, it also increases your mental agility. What they call your “executive function,” which is memory — your ability to work through problems and make impactful positive decisions in your life, is dramatically affected by how much you exercise. (American Psychological Association)
- SOCIALIZING: They found that socializing is super important how happy you are. Now, does this sound like number one? It’s not. We’re not talking about close personal relationships with family and loved ones. We’re talking about socializing with strangers or acquaintances. We’ve known for a long time that strong ties are integral to overall happiness but recently we’ve been finding that weak ones are just as important. (Sage Pub)
How to get Happy (when you just Can’t)
The reason why I started UpRoots Wellness is because I kept hearing all of this really wonderful advice, “Oh, you need relationships,” “You need to be more social,” “You need to exercise,” “You need to have enough money to be happy,” but nothing was showing me HOW.
What about people with social anxiety and low self-esteem? How are they supposed to go out and just socialize?
What about people with issues with intimacy and communication? How are they supposed to go out and create a meaningful bonds?
What about people who have been programmed with the wrong mindset? When they’re stuck being super negative or can’t think critically enough to make the right decisions or having strong emotional reactions to challenges. How are they supposed to get $75,000 a year?
And what about people who don’t have the motivation or the willpower to stay the course with exercise?
We need STEPS, not just advice! We need:
A. Inspiration
B. Motivation
C. A Charted Course
We’ve developed real TOOLS that ANYONE can use to dramatically alter their happiness levels for the better. They are all data backed and proven to be effective. They are also incredibly personal — they cater to both your unique desires & happiness goals as an individual plus your basic human needs to feel fulfilled and satisfied in life. Take the quiz below to find out which of the 4 keys you need to develop!
4 Parts of Happiness (which one do you need?)
We’ve broken down the 4 aspects of happiness necessary to a much smaller scale, a targeted approach to precisely develop what needs to be developed, and found a way HOW.
- Professional development. If you want to have enough money to be comfortable, you need to have the right mindset, you need to be able to think objectively, and you need to be able to make good decisions.
- Confidence. If you want to get out there and create those social bonds, meeting people on the fly and getting to know them, which is so necessary for overall happiness, you need to know your self-worth and your values. You need to have good boundaries and to feel body-positive. You need to have self-respect.
- Self-Love. If you want to have those loving and supportive relationships, that are the number one causal factor in relation to happiness in the longest study ever done, then you need to have good communication skills. You need to be open. You need to heal some of the hurts from the past and even have the courage to care for other people. And most importantly, you need to develop the love to care for yourself.
- Holistic health. If you want to exercise and have a high level of fitness, you need holistic health and wellness. You can’t just go and exercise a bunch and feel fantastic if the rest of your health and all of the different areas in your complete wellness aren’t looked after too. Health is holistic.
Take the Quiz to find out which one you need!
How do we tackle every aspect? We found one powerful tool, a practice that could be used to put you in the power position over any of these obstacles — to develop these positive traits. And it is GRATITUDE.
Gratitude PRACTICE is the most potent force to achieve happiness and develop all these skills, and it makes you happy IMMEDIATELY.
It blew my mind too! To think thankfulness, the most benign trait, is so powerful.
If you think gratefulness is weak, think again. It will grind up even the dirtiest, darkest outlook and pulverize it.
It is so powerful that Berkeley Scholars developed a Gratitude Curriculum! We’ve used it to develop powerful methods that target each of the specific aspects of happiness and made them available in simple, easy to use step-by-step format. And we are giving them away for free!
You can get some of that powerful gratitude today.
This soft, seemingly benign trait is positively associated with:
Emotional release
— no more toxic emotions.
Self-management
— no more bad decisions or self-sabotage.
Critical thinking
— no more reactionary impulses.
Increased motivation
— no more giving up on a big goal right after you start.
Positive emotions, connections and life satisfaction
— it makes you happy!
(Berkeley)
What is Happiness to you?
Find out which gratitude practice is for you!
