Happiness: It's as easy as.....

     Happiness, it's as easy as one, two, three, and then some. In an article based upon the findings of Psychology Department at the University of California found  here, talks about the science of happiness.  In order to really pinpoint how to measure it, we must first know what makes us happy. One of the most intriguing pats to this is that being more social is not necessarily correlated to how happy you are. People who do not socialize as much can be just as happy as people who socialize more. Of course there is the inverse as well in regards to being unhappy.  Another very interesting observation is that people who were asked to record a blessing three times a week were less happy than those asked to record a blessing once a week. Then what about money? Does more money make you more happy? According to health.usnews.com, money does in fact make people more happy, to a certain extent of course. It states that a yearly salary of up to $75,000 will increase a persons wellbeing and happiness, but anything more than that, the effect is less measurable.
     As anyone can see, the path to happiness is very complicated and it is no easy task.  Blow is a chart that illustrates the different factors that influence happiness.

This and more info can be found here.

     As you can see, many of the factors that people try to change the most that they think will affect their happiness, individually do not count for much. In all, factors such as where one lives, how much money they have spirituality/religion, and even friends only add up to a quarter (1/4) of what makes us happy. If one were to be in a great relationship and were healthy an enjoyed their work, but did not have the things listed above, they would be pretty happy. If five things were to be measured to see how happy people would be in the country would be as follows:

1.Health records
2.Money made
3.Money spent
4.Hours awake in the morning
5.Sense of content (survey)

     The science of happiness is an ongoing project that may never see an end. And though there is no simple easy answer as to how to be happy, we an try to learn all we can and implement the in our lives.

I would like to know what makes you happy. Please comment below and let me know what you think.  Enjoy!