Getting Started: Happiness

One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make someone else happy; One of the best ways to make someone else happy is to be happy yourself.

What Are the Elements of a Happy Life?

While there’s no magic, one-size-fits-all solution for building a happier, healthier, more creative, and more productive life, a few key elements stand out:

Self-knowledge.  We must know ourselves—our temperament, our interests, our values. The better we know ourselves, the more readily we can construct a life that will work for us. 

Relationships. Ancient philosophers and contemporary scientists agree: a key to happiness is strong relationships with other people. We need enduring, intimate bonds; we need to feel like we belong; we need to be able to confide; we need to be able to receive and give support.

To be happier, we need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth. In other words, we should try to create opportunities to feel positive emotions, eliminate sources of negative emotions, pursue a life that reflects our values, and find experiences of growth, learning, and teaching. Happiness isn’t something that happens to us; it’s a state we can seek to foster.

Ready to be happier?

Wherever you are, and whenever it is, now is always the right time to begin.

Read The Happiness Project.

In Gretchen Rubin’s #1 New York Times bestselling book The Happiness Project, she writes about the year she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, cutting-edge science, lessons from pop culture, and her own experiences to try to be happier.

Start your own Happiness Project.

Check out The Happiness Project, a shop where you’ll find all the practical tools, resources, and insights you need to start—or continue—your own quest to build a happier life.

The Basics

I work hard to distill my writing and research about happiness. If you’re new to my work, start here:
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The Happier™ app is a revolutionary new tool that offers concrete, actionable steps to help you build a happier life. Get personalized recommendations for habit-change strategies based on your Tendency.

Happiness Tips and Hacks

Looking for practical happiness tips? Try these: