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Key points
- Healthy habits include tasks that you can practice daily to make your happiness stronger and more durable.
- While transient happiness is excellent fun, happy habits deliver more sustainable, long-term benefits.
- Happy-producing habits include practicing gratitude, cultivating quality friendships, and acts of service.
Everyone wants to be happy. But there’s a catch: The definition of happiness can vary from person to person.
Some people find happiness in family life, business, or romance. Others may find happiness in financial wealth, politics, or athletics. Still others may find happiness in academics, spiritual practices, or the creative arts.
Different Kinds of Happiness
To further complicate matters, there are different kinds of happiness. As a psychotherapist, I’m always considering two significant forms of happiness: transient happiness, that exciting burst of pleasure that flares up but fades quickly—think vacations, holidays, parties, or gifts—or sustainable happiness, the kind of daily happiness that’s long-lasting and enduring, built on your identity, relationships, self-esteem, or unique talents.
While transient happiness is excellent fun, sustainable happiness delivers more long-term benefits.
Cultivating Happiness Habits
Here’s the rude truth: Sustainable happiness requires work—lots of it. Like any skill, it takes effort, dedication, and practice.
The best way to start is by focusing on happy habits you can practice daily to make your happiness stronger and more durable.
Essential Happy Habits
Regardless of your lifestyle, habits shape your way of being. Certain habits promote happiness, while others promote misery.
Happy-producing habits are reliable because they can improve any challenging situation. These healthy habits include the following:
- Gratitude. Cultivating a sense of gratitude is essential to lasting happiness. No matter your situation, you can find something to be grateful for. For example, I have a friend who is in critical condition; his doctors recommended hospice and estimated he had a few weeks to live. When I visited him in the hospital, I was shocked to see him in such good spirits. He explains he is grateful for the time he has left and is determined to make the most of it. He also refused hospice and recently returned home. I do not doubt that his sense of gratitude improves and extends his life.
- Acts of service. Acts of service always give you a boost of happiness. Obsessing about your problems, ruminating on your shortcomings, comparing yourself to others—such choices inevitably undermine happiness. Helping others reminds you that there are plenty of people less fortunate than you. It also gives you the added benefit of cultivating kindness and compassion, which are crucial to sustainable happiness.
- Self-care: Self-care is any activity that enriches your life, lowers stress, and refreshes you. Exercise, gardening, long walks, concerts—whatever it is, it means taking time out for your mental well-being and avoiding burnout, another major enemy of happiness.
- Friendship. The sad reality of getting older is that people grow apart and lose touch. Cultivating quality friendship is essential to your happiness; it is a resource that will never let you down. When you spend time with a good friend, you leave lighter, refreshed, and inspired. Loneliness undermines happiness; friendships fortify it.
- Creativity. Bottom line: Consuming media breeds depression. Take time to unplug from your screens and do something creative. Paint, take photos, write, dance; it doesn’t matter what the task is—creativity is the gift you give to yourself. Find a way to be creative, and you’re taking a step toward greater happiness in your daily life.
For more, see my new book, Shortcuts to a Happier Life: Essays on Life, Love & Parenting.
