#seilgman

What is one thing that made you happy today? 

Happiness is an important part of life. I think we can change the set-point of happiness overall . Happiness is often seen as circumstantial and influenced by a genetic components that is hard to take control of. What if part of our happiness is controllable, and it is possible to change and improve overall happiness through controllable factors? Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a research psychologist at the University of California and the author of The How of Happiness, shares that we can in part take care of our own happiness. Forty percent of our happiness is controllable, meaning that with potential training and rethinking, overall happiness can increase.

A way to train happiness could be looking at how to create a fuller life. In Martin Seligman’s TEDTalk, he shares that with engagement and meaning together help to create a fuller life. Engagement means using your greatest strengths and helping to recraft your life, often people are so engaged they get a flow and time stops. Additionally, meaning in this case means using your strongest strengths and using them for something beyond ourselves (this could be volunteering at a food or clothing bank). 

Additional research by Bergsma & Veenhoven (2020), shares that happiness training has a high chance of… improving happiness. However, the sole pursuit of happiness can create loneliness and may not result in true happiness. Rather, it is the training on how to engage in life satisfaction and improve life skills that promote the happiest outcome. 

To change the set point of our happiness we have to look at what we can control and create those positive changes. 

References

Bergsma, A., Buijt, I., & Veenhoven, R. (2020). Will happiness-trainings make us happier?: A research synthesis using an online findings-archive. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1953-1953. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01953