How happy are you?

Three factors are crucial to our happiness: the basic level, the circumstances - and the conscious actions. Do you consider yourself a happy person? In that case, it can help you perform and feel better. Research shows that those who have a bright outlook on life, and who have a good ability to handle fluctuations - in the project as well as in the emotional life - live a better life. How happy are you.

But what exactly is happiness? A thought that generates a pleasant feeling in the body? Or? And what does it matter, whether we are happy or unhappy? The surroundings? Or myself, or both?

Achieving happiness is ranked by many people as the highest desire they have, and the other day I stumbled upon an article where it was said that we place too high demands on ourselves when it comes to happiness. That we should instead make demands on society to reduce the demands on us. We should fight to get rid of the demands on appearance, wealth and status that society has placed on us. Then, said the author of the article, we would be happier.

But if you do not want to put your gun on it then? Or do not believe in the idea? Is it run then? Not at all, finding out what makes you happy I think is the first important step to a happier life.

A test of luck¦

Hang on now and do a quick test! If you do not have a very good memory, bring something to write about.

Write down everything you can think of that would make you happy!

What does your list look like? Many people have one of the following on their list:

• A new home
• Find a partner ("the right ")
• To avoid the pain in¦
• More time of day
• More love from your¦
• A high profit¦ (more money)

The strange thing is that research shows that none of these desirable things have any effect in the long run. Rather, once we have had some of the above met, it does not take long before our experience of greater happiness disappears.

What makes us happy?

Research shows what makes us happy - and they succeeded in determining the most important happiness factors.

What determines how happy you are is about your basic level, your circumstances, and your conscious actions. The distribution between them, probably makes some of us a little surprised:

• Basic level 50%
• Circumstances 10%

Conscious actions 40%

The basic level is genetically predetermined, and it is not affected by individual events. It is easy to believe that a change in, for example, living standards could affect the basic level (up or down), but this is not the case, it has been shown. This is known from extensive research on twins. It shows that we are all born with a basic level that we inherit from our biological mother and father. You can compare it to the fact that we all have a basic level for body weight - some do not even have to make an effort to maintain their weight.

Circumstances are about what standard of living we have, how healthy we are, about the appearance we were born with.

Happiness can be influenced

And so to the third and final part: the last 40 percent of the explanation for happiness consists of our behavior. Our thoughts, feelings and actions determine how much happiness we can achieve! Isn't that absolutely wonderful? And at the same time, not simply?

But this actually means that we, both you and I, can influence how happy we are. That we can also be much happier than we feel today. That we can imagine ourselves happy. That what we do, our actions, are important for the happiness we experience.

Must Read: How to handle challenges

The researchers concluded that those who felt greater happiness spent a lot of time with family and friends and nurtured their relationships. They also found it easy to feel grateful.

Here are some tips. Take them as a starting point to find activities that allow you to feel happier.

Gratitude

A well-known tip is to write down three things you are grateful for every day. Then you learn, and your brain, what you are actually happy with. You think more positive thoughts. And the most interesting thing is that when you are happy, you get more feelings of happiness, which in turn breeds more gratitude, which in turn¦ yes you understand, right?

Nurture relationships

Both you and I know that social relationships are the most important thing that exists for our survival. Despite this, it is often our loved ones who get the slap when there is too much around us. We need to train our ability to be kind, to each other and to ourselves. There are many who have written more about it.

Deal with setbacks

What we experience, think and feel in connection with a specific event is our individual interpretation of what happened. Another person who was present at the same event has his own experience of it. No experience is more right or wrong, it's just the individual's interpretation. And the interesting thing is that we can choose how we want to interpret what is happening to us. If you think about it, you probably have your very own example of this. How do you want to do differently next time? How do you want to think about what just happened? Is there an alternative way to look at it?

Maintain happiness?

More positive emotions lead to more feelings of happiness and surely you can find an activity that leads to happiness, and which in turn creates even more feelings of happiness. What you do has then started a positive spiral.

The great thing about the positive spiral is that when you combine several activities, you replenish the feeling of happiness regularly and keep it.

This does not mean that you have to stick to a certain schedule, with exactly the same activities every day. To keep the feeling requires variety and variety, but you already knew that?