The Effective and Ineffective Methods to Increase and Sustain Happiness

First, what is happiness?

Happiness is a state of being happy. In the context of mental or emotional states, it's the positive or
pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. Furthermore, happiness includes life
satisfaction, well-being, and flourishing.

We all want to be happy. And science shows that happiness do not only makes one feels great but also
predicts better physical health and even a higher paycheck. But how do we pursue happiness
effectively? Some recent scientific research actually cautions us against the pursuit of happiness. For
instance, a study led by a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley (Iris Mauss),
found that people instructed to feel happier while watching a pleasant film clipebl ended up feeling
worse than people instructed just to watch the clip.

The difference between effectively and ineffectively pursuing happiness may all be in how we go about
it. Research suggests that people who fight to feel happy all of the time may suffer from
disappointments, and people who chase happiness as if it were the only thing that matters may,
absurdly, chase happiness away.

But these are not the only ways you can go about pursuing happiness. Another approach is known as
"prioritizing positivity" deliberately organizing your day-to-day life so that it contains situations that
naturally increases positive emotions. This way of pursuing happiness involves carving out time in your
daily activities to do things that you genuinely love, whether it be writing, gardening, or connecting with
loved ones. Prioritizing positivity also involves heavily weighing the positive emotional consequences of
major life decisions, like taking a new job, which have implications for the daily situations in which you
will regularly find yourself. This way of pursuing happiness means carefully putting yourself in contexts
that immediately trigger positive emotions.