How To Achieve Happiness (Part 1)

Open a dictionary and happiness comes back as something tidy: the state of being happy, good fortune, pleasure, contentment, joy. In practice the word means something different to each person. Wanting to be happy is easy. Pinning down what happiness actually looks like for you, and then holding onto it, is where most of us get stuck. Working on yourself partly means asking how you could live with more of it.

Martin Seligman, the researcher behind Authentic Happiness, splits happiness into three pieces: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Pleasure is the simple feel-good layer. Engagement is the texture of a full life, your work, the people close to you, the things you do for fun. Meaning is what happens when you put your strengths toward something bigger than yourself. Seligman counts all three as real, though he puts the weight on engagement and meaning when it comes to a life that stays happy rather than a mood that passes.

There's a gap between feeling happy in a moment and being a happy person. Worth sitting with two questions: do I have a happy life, and am I a happy person? Those aren't the same thing. The point of personal growth here is building yourself into someone who tends toward happiness and reads life that way. So how do you get there? A few approaches.

Optimism comes first. A positive read on your situations and experiences tends to pull more of the same toward you. Call it the law of attraction if you like: positive energy generates positive energy, and the reverse runs just as true. Think about the chronically negative person you know, the one some people call a Debbie Downer. How do you feel after twenty minutes with them? Maybe you catch yourself avoiding the conversation entirely because it leaves you drained or on edge. Now picture the opposite person, the one whose good mood somehow becomes your good mood. When your own outlook tilts optimistic, you act happier, and that spills forward into more happiness. A few ways to stay there: trust yourself, believe your goals are actually within reach, give yourself credit for what you've already pulled off, and lean toward reading the glass as half full.

Second, notice what's already good. Gratitude for the things that exist right now, friends, family, a job, some experience you're glad you had, tends to produce happiness on its own. Write them down. Make an actual list, and don't skip the things you're only partly grateful for. If your job frustrates you but you're still glad to have one, that belongs on the list too. The list does its work by reminding you of what's there when you forget. Add to it as new people and moments show up.

Third, take care of the body you live in. The same three things you've been hearing about for years: eat well, sleep well, move. Looking after yourself makes a broad sense of wellbeing more likely because it keeps you physically steady. Seven to eight hours of sleep is the usual recommendation, and a rested brain handles problems and enjoys good moments better than a tired one. Eating well gives your body the vitamins, minerals, and nutrition it runs on. There's a quiet satisfaction in simply knowing you're treating yourself decently. Research has shown that physical wellbeing and emotional balance travel together, and emotional balance is another name for a steady sense of happiness.

Fourth, smile. A smile nudges your mood upward, and holding a negative outlook gets harder when your face is already doing the opposite. Smiling can reset how you meet a situation. It works on other people too. Smiles spread. Smile at a coworker or a stranger at the store and some of them feel a little lighter, smile back, or carry it to the next person.

Happiness is reachable. Growth of this kind asks for time and some commitment, and the effort you put toward it pays back. Once happiness is more established in your life, the small stressors get easier to carry and the days feel fuller. - Kim B.