How to be Intentionally Happy

Posted: Friday, February 10, 2012 by Tyler Durden in
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How to be Intentionally Happy

Written by Bobbi Emel - 20 Comments
Categories: self improvement
What makes you happy?
Money? The newest iPhone? The good health of your family? A promotion at work?
Some interesting work by University of California, Riverside researcher Sonja Lyubomirskynot only suggests where our happiness comes from, but shows how to get more of it.
Pieces of the happiness pie
Dr. Lyubomirsky proposes that there are three components to happiness:
  • A genetically-based “happiness set point”
  • Life circumstances
  • Intentional activities and practices.
She has broken these three areas into percentages regarding how much they are responsible for your happiness.
Although the variability of the happiness set point is currently undergoing more research, Lyubomirsky cites studies that indicate the set point is responsible for 50% of your overall happiness.
Life circumstances – things like the aforementioned iPhone, family health, and work promotion – account for only 10% of your happiness.
That leaves intentional activities aimed toward positive emotion providing you with 40% of your happiness quotient.
Now, here are a couple of important things to know:
  • Your happiness set point is genetic and therefore impervious to change. The theory is that no matter what happens – good or bad – you tend to eventually settle back into your inherited level of happiness. So, there’s no use trying to make an impact on your happiness set point.
  • You could try to improve your life circumstances by getting more stuff, striving for career goals, and finding the perfect partner. But not only do life circumstances only account for a small percentage of your happiness, they are subject to a very human process:hedonic adaptation. In a nutshell, this means that we very quickly adapt to new things in our lives, so our happiness about it is short-lived.
Taking action toward happiness
So that leaves us with intentional activities as the remaining piece of the happiness pie, a piece that creates 40% of our well-being. Lyubomirsky believes it is this component that we have the most control over and that allows us to take action rather than merely reactwhen it comes to creating happiness.
So what are these activities that promote positive emotions and well-being? Lyubomirsky suggests three well-researched practices:
1. Committing acts of kindness. Doing nice things for others tends to up your happiness quotient. Curiously, Lyubomirsky found that doing several acts of kindness on the same day – rather than spreading them out through the week – generated the greatest jump in well-being.
2. Expressing gratitude and optimism. Keeping a list of things you are grateful for really does help make you happier. An intriguing note on this component is the discovery that making a list one time per week created a greater boost in happiness than making lists three or more times per week.
3. Processing happy and unhappy life experiences. This is where it really gets interesting. It turns out that talking or writing about your life experiences is helpful in only one of these conditions: the negative experiences.
Why? Apparently, talking to a friend or writing about difficult times in your life helps you to create a story and structure around the event, an act which helps you make sense of it and adjust to the experience more easily.
Positive experiences, however, generate more happiness if they are thought about privately. This allows you to savor and re-experience them without having to analyze them. It’s perfectly fine to talk with others about great things that happen to you as this will brighten your friend’s day, too.  But be sure to remember and relish those good events in your life in your private time, too.
What makes you happy? Slice yourself a bigger piece of the happiness pie using intentional activities. You’ll be happy you did.
Psychotherapist Bobbi Emel specializes in helping people face life’s significant challenges and regain their resiliency. In addition to seeing clients in her private practice, Bobbi is a well-regarded speaker and writer. You can find her blog at http://www.TheBounceBlog.com
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Showing 15 comments

  • Emily Hunter, Emily Hunter writes for Million Ways to Save, Three Motivational Quotes, and Eleven MInute Awesome. She is a writer for hire who is dedicated to wordcrafting, grammar, and the Oxford comma. If you need some reasonable writing rates, or just like meeting folks, send Emily an email at justyammer@gmail.com
    One of the hardest things that I had to learn was that I was responsible for my own happiness, and that my attitude was what was reflected back to me.  If I was a PITA, those around me were... if I was nice... well, I got nice back. :) Thank you for the post!
  • Bobbi emel
    Thanks, Emily!
  • Justin Mazza, Blogging about personal growth is my game!
    Great points Bobbi. It is so true that once we get that "thing" that is supposed to make us happy the happiness eventually goes away.

    It takes some cultivation to become happy but its definitely worth it.
  • Bobbi emel
    I like your word "cultivation", Justin. That is really true and it seems that the research shows this as well!

  • Www.pristineperception.com
    Sorry I have to disagree with the happiness set point being genetic. This is an excuse to not move forward or play the victim. Otherwise your plans of action are great!
  • Bobbi emel
    You might want to take a look at the research. While there is still a lot of questions about how much of our happiness is within our genes and how changeable it is, the idea that there is a genetic set point is pretty well established.
  • Bobbi Emel
    And I'm glad you liked the other ideas, though!
  • adel
    Sometimes it is really the simplest things that makes us happy but we tend to overlook because of the material things that we are longing, I truly believe that we must take action towards happiness instead of waiting for it to happen nice post, this one made me happy and this is simple, happiness is just a matter of perspective.



    Zero Dramas
  • Bobbi Emel
    Thanks, Adel. I agree!
  • Amy Swanson
    I've learned from experience that sharing all the positive experiences with others isn't the best idea. I never really knew why, but you're exactly right. People analyze it until they've taken the entire situation and have reduced it to nothing. I'll know to keep some positive moments to myself instead of sharing with everybody. Great article, Bobbi!
  • Bobbi Emel
    Thanks, Amy!
  • Jason Scott
    I
    agree that happiness is temporary, and suggest that it can be contagious as
    well. I get a high off of the happiness of others sometimes. If someone faces
    an awful obstacle in life and they overcome it. Their genuine elation makes me
    happy. I concede that it's a temporary emotion. But for that moment, nothing
    else is more important than the buzz I feel for that other person.
  • Bobbi Emel
    Yes, Jason, you make a good point. There is certainly nothing at all wrong with those temporary infusions of happiness that occur all the time. I like your idea how happiness can be contagious. Cool!
  • Clint Cora, Motivational speaker, self help author & Karate World Champion. See my FREE 3-part Personal Development Video series at my website.
    I read somewhere that happiness is a personal choice we all make and I think there is a lot of truth to that.  When I think about my own past which has been quite eventful, I know that I always made the choice to be happy by actively pursuing the things I want to do in life, ie., my passions.
  • BobbiEmelCollapse
    Yes, I agree, Clint, and I think that one of the ways we can choose happiness is to actively pursue it via intentional activities like those mentioned in the article. Thanks for your comment!

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