Happiness Explained: 10 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Happiness Level

How to improve your happiness level within minutes

"It requires some effort to achieve a happy outlook on life, and most people don't make it."

Author and researcher Gregg Easterbrook

Did you know that recent studies suggest that 40% of what makes us happy is within our control? So why not try some of the strategies listed below. You might be pleasantly surprised.

10 Things You Can Do to Improve Your Happiness Level

(in no particular order)

1. Counting your blessings, expressing gratitude for what you have.

2. Choose experience over stuff. Psychologist Ryan Howell found in his research that people felt “more alive” when reflecting on experiences compared to things—and that experiences led to more happiness in those around them than their purchases did. Howell says, "As nice as your new computer is, it's not going to make you feel alive." Lottery winners report that after a while, money and possessions don’t make them as happy as the simple pleasures they enjoyed before winning.

3. Stay in bright light because most people get a powerful surge of energy from sunlight or bright indoor light. Try moving your desk chair closer to a window or better yet, take a five minute outdoor walk every few hours.

4. People are they happiest when they achieve their aims, so set yourself goals which stretch you, but are achievable.

5. Friends: Did you know that having lots of friends improves your immune system? Scientists have discovered that friendship have a more bigger effect on happiness than money. So make sure you devote more time and effort to close relationships and try to expand your social network as much as you can. Confiding and discussing problems and issues with a good friend is good for happiness, so work on these relationships.

6. Learn what makes you happy. Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi recommends that in order to understand our own happiness people should systematically record their activities and feelings every few hours for a week or two. In recording your observations, try to focus on how you actually feel, rather than what you think you ought to be feeling or what you expect to feel. Afterwards, note the high points, particularly, and the low ones. Then try to adjust how you spend time according to your findings.

7. Seek work that engages your skills, look to enjoy your job. Doing well at work creates happiness, and the easiest way of doing well at work, is doing a job you enjoy.

8. Give your body the sleep it needs. Too many people have a sleep deficit resulting in fatigue, gloomy moods and lack of concentration.

9. Don't pursue happiness for its own sake,enjoy the moment. Because people don’t understand what makes them happy, pursuing happiness can be self-defeating. Additionally, if people start to aim for happiness they are doing activities for happiness’s sake rather than actually enjoying the activity itself.

Take control of your life, set yourself achievable goals. People are

10. Love and good quality sex: Human beings need to loved and be loved. In Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz and Stone (2003) measuring the quality of life, the authors found that among a sample of 1000 employed women that sex was rated retrospectively as the activity that produces the largest amount of happiness. Need to say more ;)