different backgrounds grow up and grow old, revealing the long-term trajectory of ordinary—if highly examined—lives. In the newest installment, being released this month in the US, we check in with participants at age 56. (You can stream the entire series on Netflix or catch some of them on youtube). As they enter their autumn years in 56 Up, the themes of the series have gone well beyond the United Kingdom’s class structure, to raise much more fundamental questions about happiness, relationships, purpose, and commitment. In re-watching the series and seeing 56 Up in the theater, I was struck by the fact that the series brings to life insights that we might dismiss ... posted on Nov 4 2013 (35,922 reads)

do you fit a full-sized family into a tiny house? The Morrisons and Kasls found that the benefits of life in 200 square feet outweigh the difficulties. The Kasls, of Minnesota, simplified family life by going tiny. Photo by Nichole Freiberger. Andrew and Gabriella Morrison live in Oregon and have two teenage kids, 18-year-old Paiute and 14-year-old Terra. They made the decision to downsize their home four years ago. They now live in a 207-square-foot house with an additional 110 square feet of sleeping lofts. Although their son, Paiute, no longer lives at home, Terra lives in the tiny house full time with her parents. The Morrisons both work in straw bale construct... posted on Feb 12 2015 (25,616 reads)

effects. Now that we’re a week into 2015, most of us have come down from the buzz of the holidays and returned to life as normal. And after spending weeks, if not months, obsessing over the gifts and goodies that awaited us in December, some of us may feel a post-holiday hangover, where we realize that we’re probably no happier than we were before we got that new flat screen TV or cappuccino maker. This won’t come as a surprise to anyone tracking the science of happiness, which suggests that material things are unlikely to boost our happiness in a sustained or meaningful way. In fact, research suggests that materialistic people are less happy than their peer... posted on Apr 9 2015 (34,406 reads)

there a secret to happiness? Is happiness spending time with loved ones, or spending time alone in nature? Is it losing yourself as you dance to music, or finding yourself while quietly meditating? The secret to happiness is actually all of these things and more, and it varies from country to country and culture to culture. According to the annual World Happiness Report, Norway is the happiest country, scoring highly in its approach to caring, freedom, generosity, honesty, health, income and good governance. Meanwhile, the Happy Planet Index ranks Costa Rica as the happiest country on Earth. While opposites when it comes to climate, the two ... posted on Feb 21 2018 (20,712 reads)

trick to being happy with your job doesn’t necessarily lie in earning more money. We all spend a large part of our lives at our jobs. Yet how many of us are bored or frustrated at work, whether unhappy with our company’s goals, stressed from overwork, or dealing with toxic coworkers? Don’t we deserve better than that? The new book How to Be Happy at Work makes the case that, yes, we do, and happiness at work should be our ultimate goal. Written by Annie McKee—an international business advisor and senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education—the book provides ideas for how to turn your job into a source ... posted on Apr 28 2018 (59,413 reads)

can we create a happier world? That question is on many people’s minds today, as we celebrate the sixth annual International Day of Happiness. This event grew out of a United Nations resolution - affirming happiness as a fundamental human goal - and suggesting that we should approach economic growth in a way that promotes well-being for everyone. Social systems and institutions have a role to play in our happiness, and that’s evident in this year’s World Happiness Report. Researchers ranked countries by their average happiness levels and found, for example, that GDP, life expectancy, freedom, and corruption make a difference. In the rankin... posted on Aug 8 2018 (23,274 reads)

Tippett, host: I’ve had hundreds of big conversations, and my conversation partners share wisdom I carry with me wherever I go. I’ve never thought about happiness the same way since I spoke with the French-born Tibetan Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard. I like his language of human flourishing as the real aspiration — that happiness is not a sensation or a feeling; it’s a state of being that can encompass all of the things that happen in life. This is Becoming Wise. I’m Krista Tippett. Ms. Tippett: You’re worldly, wise, and rational. And we also live in this culture where the word happiness gets completely watered down. So I want ... posted on Jun 19 2019 (8,846 reads)

all want to lead a happy life. But in our quest for 'progress' we've been pursuing priorities that put our happiness at risk - not just for us as individuals, but for society as a whole. Our collective aim should be a society with the greatest possible human happiness and wellbeing - with policies, institutions and social attitudes that help people to lead flourishing lives. This is the spirit behind a resolutionwhich was adopted last year by all 193 United Nations member states, calling for "a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth", and one which promotes "happiness and the well-being of all peoples". To support... posted on Mar 20 2013 (23,836 reads)

I know all about it, that’s the thing with the endorphins, that makes you feel good and why we should exercise and stuff, right?” is what I can hear myself say to someone bringing this up. I would pick up things here and there, yet really digging into the connection of exercise and how it effects us has never been something I’ve done. Inspired by a recent post from Joel on what makes us happy I’ve set out to uncover the connection between our feeling of happiness and exercising regularly. What triggers happiness in our brain when we exercise? Most of us are aware of what happens to the body when we exercise. We build more muscle or more stamina... posted on Aug 27 2013 (58,486 reads)

lot of people search for ways to find happiness, but I’ve found the idea of contentment to be more important than happiness. Why contentment over happiness? A couple of important reasons: Happiness can go up or down each day (or moment), but contentment is something more stable. We tend to seek to increase happiness by adding things (food, excitement, a warm bath, time with a loved one) but contentment is a skill that allows you to subtract things and still be content. Contentment can actually be a good place to start as you make changes (changes and contentment might seem paradoxical to some, but hear me out). What is contentment? For me, it’s really about being... posted on Jun 22 2013 (36,558 reads)

are the key research-based principles for turning gratitude into a lasting habit, drawing from the GGSC’s new website, Greater Good in Action. Over the past two decades, much of the research on happiness can be boiled down to one main prescription: give thanks. Across hundreds of studies, practicing gratitude has been found to increasepositive emotions, reduce the risk of depression, heighten relationship satisfaction, and increase resilience in the face of stressful life events, among other benefits. The problem is, gratitude doesn’t always come naturally. The negatives in our lives—the disappointments, resentments, and fears—sometimes ... posted on Jul 27 2015 (49,125 reads)

latter endeavors irresolution produces false steps, and in the life of the mind confused ideas.” And yet that inner knowing is the work of a lifetime, for our confusions are ample and our missteps constant amid a world that is constantly telling us who we are and who we ought to be — a world which, in the sobering words of E.E. Cummings, “is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else.” Try as we might not to be blinded by society’s prescriptions for happiness, we are still social creatures porous to the values of our peers — creatures surprisingly and often maddeningly myopic about the things we believe furnish our completeness as human bei... posted on Jan 1 2018 (13,746 reads)

he is ever-ready to explain his choices to anyone who wants to know. He has tasted/experienced everything other kids have and is presented the opportunities many times, given our frequent visits to many relatives and friends in different places. Of course he gets tempted at times and rebels. Steering away from the extremes of bribing and punishing, we manage to strike a balance and help him stick to his better choices. He doesn't have grand ideas and concepts for what would bring him happiness. He is just fully living his life. Everything has meaning for him. He doesn't overlook this moment expecting another; he is not chasing after anything and has no plans for tomorrow. He g... posted on Apr 26 2020 (47,374 reads)

to revel in the “sudden awareness of the citizenry of all things within one world.” Nearly a century before  modern neuroscience presented the uncomfortable finding that mind-wandering is making us unhappy, Bertrand Russell contemplated the conquest of happiness and pointed to the immense value of “fruitful monotony” — a certain quality of presence with the ordinary rhythms of life. The diaries and letters of humanity’s greatest minds are strewn with such instances of finding happiness in simple everyday moments, but no one captures the humble grace of presence better than Mary Oliver in one particularly bewitching passage from ... posted on Apr 30 2015 (19,556 reads)

6 percent of U.S. workers checked their work email when they or their spouse were in labor.   Technology can bring happiness. Anyone who’s found the perfect meditation app or downloaded a grandchild’s photo won’t doubt that. But technology can also bring anxiety, stress, and frustration. And that seems to be a given, too, making us throw our hands in the air. We accept that technology will always be a mixed bag and we have to take the bad with the good. "I worry that maybe our happiness is getting left behind." According to Amy Blankson, author of the new book The Future of Happiness: 5 Modern Strategies for Balancing Productivity a... posted on Jun 25 2017 (12,156 reads)

and from our own small vantage point, we are interested in allowing people to see the images, to get inspired, and to respond in whatever pro-social, positive ways that are unique to them.  The relationship to connecting to othersall bubbled up for me in a conversation I had with Lionel Ketchian, who founded the framework for people to form “Happiness Clubs” to help people to have happier lives. In one conversation we discussed what comes first: Is it kindness that drives happiness? Because people who are kinder tend to be more happy. Or is it happiness that allows people to be kind? It occurred to me that that there actually isn’t a straight line here. Rather, i... posted on Feb 27 2018 (14,623 reads)

window into people’s greatest aspirations for their life, the researchers surveyed people from the United States and Korea about their biggest regret. Here, 28% of Americans and 35% of Koreans said their lives would be psychologically richer (rather than happier or more meaningful) if they could undo this regret, suggesting that psychological richness is a dominant life goal for them. These studies offer clues about a key value we hold that may not be captured by common conceptions of happiness or meaning—it has more to do with adventurous and thrilling experiences. “Taking the psychologically rich life seriously will deepen, broaden, and, yes, enrichen our un... posted on Dec 24 2020 (8,827 reads)

for Happiness has developed the 10 Keys to Happier Living based on a review of the latest scientific research relating to happiness. Everyone’s path to happiness is different, but the research suggests these Ten Keys consistently tend to have a positive impact on people’s overall happiness and well-being. The first five (GREAT) relate to how we interact with the outside world in our daily activities*. The second five (DREAM) come more from inside us and depend on our attitude to life.   1. GIVING: Do things for others   Caring about others is fundamental to our happiness. Helping other people is not only good for them and a g... posted on Apr 14 2012 (91,426 reads)

main thing is to get what little happiness there is out of life in this wartorn world,” Clare Boothe Luce advised her young daughter, “because ‘these are the good old days’ now.” And yet most of us are conditioned to escape into the past, into the future, into our to-do lists — to wander off away from the present, even as we chronicle the moment in real-time on various lifestreaming platforms. If you’ve read any of these seven essential books on happiness or taken the sage advice of Jackson Pollock’s dad, the research findings from his Track Your Happiness project Matt Killingsworth... posted on Apr 4 2013 (27,622 reads)

care of human life and happiness…is the only legitimate object of good government,” —Thomas Jefferson, 1809. Everyone wants to be happy, and increasingly, countries around the world are looking at happiness as an indicator of national well-being and considering happiness in policy making. As this year’s World Happiness Report states, “Happiness is increasingly considered a proper measure of social progress and a goal of public policy.” But what makes people happy, and which countries have the highest levels of happiness? For the World Happiness Report, researchers ranked countries based on factors including healthy life e... posted on Jul 8 2015 (69,949 reads)