Factors of happiness

What actually makes us happy?

Luckily, researchers have found an answer to the question that has plagued philosophers for thousands of years.

But before we get into that, there is one important concept you need to understand: Baseline Happiness

We all have a happiness baseline, which is our general long-term happiness. Now, there will always be good days (such as winning the lottery) and not-so-good days (like being paralyzed), and so our daily happiness constantly fluctuates around the baseline.

The important thing here is, happiness, always returns back to baseline. In fact, research by Dr. Happiness aka Ed Diener has found that even after such drastic life changes such as winning the lottery and being paralyzed, happiness will eventually return back to baseline.

So what if we want to become happier?

I’m glad you asked! Research by Sonja Lyubomirsky has shown that we actually can raise our happiness baseline — if we know how.

Setpoint:
We all have a genetic predisposition for happiness that accounts for roughly 50% of your happiness. Researchers still argue over the exact numbers, but what matters is this: As is nearly everything, some people win the genetic lottery of life, and some people lose.
However, even if you are one of those unlucky people seemingly doomed for misery, don’t give up just yet! There’s still 50% of your happiness left.
Conditions:
These are our external circumstances, which we often tend to focus on the most: Money, status, jobs, cars, beautiful houses, and other external things that we chase in the pursuit of happiness.
Now, I hate to break it to you, but money won’t make you happy. At least according to the aforementioned Ed Diener, who was the first person to study happiness scientifically. Diener compared people on the Forbe’s list of wealthiest Americans with the general population, and found that they were only slightly happier than average, with 37% being less happy than the average American. Looks like we might have been chasing the wrong things.
Now, since we cannot control our genetics, and we can only in part control our external circumstances, there’s only one thing left to increase our happiness: