There are factors that affect happiness like employment, health, democratic freedom, optimism, endorphins released through physical exercise and eating chocolate, religious involvement, income and proximity to other happy people. Most people can adapt to variety of negative and disturbing circumstances like death of a close person or significant changes in marital status, but are mostly unable to return to the previous level of well-being after divorce, serious illness and unemployment.
It was proved that the level of happiness is not a standstill state only disturbance by negative and positive events. Some major disturbances may affect your happiness to greater extend than others. A recent study on human happiness reveals that our adaptation to major life events is not the only factor to influence our well-being. Those who will have their life run in a more balanced way feel happy long before the fortunate occurrence in their life. But individual factor cannot be underestimated. Thus the study shows that not only our flexibility to life’s ups and downs plays an important role for our subjective feeling of happiness. The innate individual differences are claimed to overpower personal ability to adaptation.
The more positive events we have, the more we become fragile to negative events. We just find ourselves dwelling on the negative event when we have a lot of positive things in our life. According to the latest multi-cultural study, people who feel happy in general shouldn’t try to become even happier as in fact they risk to become less happy. People who get accustomed to life full of a great number of happy events are more likely to suffer deeply from a negative situation than those who know how to accept the bad with the good. People who feel extreme happiness after buying a new house, or getting married, are quickly disillusioned by the necessary payments or the daily spats. They have to face a problem of ratio, or perspective.
Women feel unhappy later in life than men in spite of the fact that many of them are happier in their early adulthood.The researchers revealed that women generally start out happier than men, but their sense of well-being diminishes with the time. The happiness largely was linked to such important aspects of life satisfaction as family and finances.
Men after the age of 48 are more satisfied with their family lives and finances than women. Both men and women see happy marriage as their life goal in early adulthood with nine out of ten people of both genders pointing out to this factor. However, overall satisfaction for men and women will be different depending on the realization of this goal.
At age 64 men are more satisfied with their family life than women.
Researchers also added that the study revealed greater satisfaction for previous generation in comparison to the recent generation despite having more.
Here are some advices to be happy:
You should know what really matters, choose the important projects for each year.
Build your character, take responsibility for your life.
Put time aside for yourself each day to play or to just be yourself.
Be who you are and work creatively.
Have positive mind, and surround yourself with people who motivate, inspire.
Eat healthy food, and follow the rules to keep fit and healthy.
Start with what you have and forget the past.
Develop multiple passions, and build relationships.
Take time to be grateful for yourself and for others, learn to appreciate the little things and the rest will follow.
Change yourself to get something done.
Use your talents, control your ambitions.
Beware of small things.
Make others happy.