Few days back I saw a girl, she was 6 years old ,having chocolate ice cream and she was so happy. Chocolate was all over her face and she was really really happy relishing her ice cream. Looking at her, I thought why can’t we all be that happy. That’s when I decided to give my next speech on happiness. What makes us happy and why different people have different levels of happiness. I thought let me ask science about it, as science always has something to say. And Actually I saw that there has been lot of research done on happiness.

One of the research done by Prof. Sonja Lamborowsky of University of California states that our happiness actually depends upon 3 major factors:

1. Genetics
2. Circumstances
3. Internal choices

Talking about Genetics, Genes control 50% of our happiness. What!! No way. I’ve always blamed my forefathers for my height and now they control 50% of my happiness too. I couldn’t believe that, so I did more research. Turns out, the fact is actually right. Research done by university of Minnesota confirms this. They did this research on 75 pair of twins who were raised apart. Researchers did various assessments when the twins were in 40s and found that the twins had similar level of happiness. And no other thing correlated with happiness as much as genes. So yes, 50% of our happiness is controlled by our genes.

So, On a happiness scale of 1-10, If you are 8-9. You are a Polyana and you dont need to do much to be happy, just thank your forefathers everyday. But if you are 4 or 5 , you’ll have to work a little harder to stay happy.

2nd factor that determines our happiness is circumstances, which i thought to be a big one. Let me give you 2 extreme scenarios:

1. You have won a lottery ticket, let’s say of Rs 1 crore. OR
2. You are paralysed.

What will happen to your happiness after 12 months of the event happening. Actually there is a research done by p. Bickerman, and it states that actually after 12 months of the events your happiness levels will almost be same as before the event.

Sonja’s research also states that circumstances will only have 10% impact on your happiness.

You know what that means, that means no matter you get a better job, you get married, get divorced, buy a bigger house, move to a smaller house or even get paralyzed it might have a temporary effect on your happiness but overall it won’t impact your happiness more than 10% so relax.

3rd factor is Internal Choice, it determines 40% of our happiness. 40%, is huge, it means we can create our own happiness. It depends upon us what we make of the world. Prof Dan Gilbert of Harvard calls it synthetic happiness. Happiness that we can synthesize. Dan also shares these 3 examples that I am sharing with you:

Number 1: Pete Best, Pete Best was the original drummer of famous band Beatles, but he was thrown out of the band and when interviewed after few years, he said “I would never have been this happy with Beatles”

Moreese Bickerman, he spent 37 years of his life in Jail and when released he said, “I have no regrets, It was a glorious experience”.37 years in prison and he says it was glorious!!!

Jim Wright, a powerful democrat, some scandal broke out and he was asked to leave the party and also lost almost all of his money in litigation and this is what he says in an interview.”I feel so good emotionally, physically and financially”.

So, what can we learn from them about synthesizing happiness:

If you want to be happy:

1. Spend half of your lives in jail
2. Accrue wealth and money and lose it all
3. Never ever join Beatles

Jokes aside, but what we can learn is that we can control our happiness, we can synthesize our own happiness no matter what the situation is. There are lot of things that we can do to be happier but I would like to leave you guys with 3 actionable tips that you can start implementing from today.

First:

Start meditating.Even for 2 minutes. Meditation will help you focus more on present and you will feel happier. There is research going on to find if mindfulness can actually change your happiness set point.I wish it happens to be true.

Second: Maintain a gratitude journal, just write 1 good thing that happened to you on daily basis, may be the food you had was really tasty, or any small good thing. University of Berkley’s research shows that people who maintain a gratitude journal are significantly happier than those who don’t even after 12 weeks of stopping the activity.

Third: Trick your brain, Make it believe that you are happy and how can you do that? Just smile guys.Smile and you will feel happier. I hope you find these tips useful and if you still don’t feel happy than you must have a chocolate ice cream.