One of the books that was a turning point for me in all the research I have done on happiness, joy, and laughter was “The How of Happiness” by Sonja Lyubomirsky
In it she talks about the 12 activities anyone can do to easily increase happiness.
It occurred to me that I hadn’t really talked about these things and I’ve decided it’s about time I do.
So what are these 12 Activities?
Simply put they are:
- Expressing Gratitude
- Cultivating Optimism
- Avoiding Overthinking and Social Comparison
- Practicing Acts of Kindness
- Nurturing Social Relationships
- Developing Strategies for Coping
- Learning to Forgive
- Increasing Flow Experiences
- Savoring Life’s Joys
- Committing to Your Goals
- Practicing Religion
- Taking Care of Your Body
But this doesn’t really tell you a whole lot does it. It’s only a starting point.
So over the next few days I’ll be writing about each of these in depth, what the book says as well as my experiences with them.
I’ll start by simply saying this: not all of these activities work for everyone.
In the book there is a test you can do to find out which will probably be best for you, but I found that once you know more about them you can usually tell which ones will fit you best.
Also I’ll give you a little bit of background on the theory of the book to start.
Essentially a new field of psychology known as “positive psychology” has emerged in the last couple of decades and is gaining strength. As opposed to looking at the “negative” side of the brain and thought, this looks as how we can help people be more positive. Essentially, if you think of happiness and depression on a scale (happiness being 10 and depression being -10) psychology for the most part has only really looked at why people fall below 0 and how to get them back to 0 (neutral). Positive psychology has taken the opposite view and posed the question, how do we get someone from 0 or so, to 10?
What they have found is that most people have a happiness set point that is genetically set (because of our genes, some of us are naturally more happy than others). They have also found that life circumstances do affect happiness, but IN A MUCH LESS SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT than most people think. Also we have a certain amount of room to increase our own happiness through pursuing intentional activities (the ones I mentioned above).
The ratio of how this breaks down – genes to circumstances to our ability to increase happiness through intentional activity is as follows
- Genes 50%
- Circumstances 10%
- Intentional Activity 40%
Meaning 50% of your total possible happiness is made up of your genes, and how happy your ancestors were. So if they were very happy, your 50% might be at a 45 or 48 or even 50, if they were not so happy, you might be at a 10 or 20.
Now add to that you life experiences which only provides up to 10% of your total possible happiness. So if you’ve had exceptionally good experiences you might be at a 9 or 10, if you’ve had exceptionally bad you might be at a 0 or 1.
NOTE – most people tend to HIGHLY over estimate how much outside events happening to them will affect their happiness. This seems to work in both directions, people think that if they won $100 million in the lottery they would be SO much happier. Studies of lottery winners has shown time and again that this is not the case and most people end up returning to their happiness set point, with some actually feeling WORSE because of this new financial gain. Conversely people tend to also inflate how badly something like a terminal illness or going blind would make them feel. Here again, most people actually return to their set point after they adapt to the new state.
So that means you have 40% of your happiness you can affect through intentional activity. If you are not doing anything at the moment, then you’ve got LOTS of room to increase your happiness, possibly by 20, 30, or 40% of your overall happiness.
THAT is the power of these activities to change your life and build happiness.
Next time I’ll talk about HOW to go about working at the activities, because how you do it is almost as important as what you do.
Until then, keep laughing and building happiness.