Is Happiness Your Goal?

Although it was previously thought that happiness was extended from your genes or luck, researchers have found that happiness can actually be learned and cultivated.  It has been a long-lived myth that money increases one’s happiness, but many studies have shown that isn’t necessarily the case.  Once income provides for your basic needs, it no longer correlates with happiness.  

Scientists have found that hope is actually a large factor that goes with happiness.  It is necessary for you to feel like your life has meaning.  Helping other people can in fact lead to stronger relationships and an overall upward spiral of happiness.  Michael Lee, marketing director, believes that happiness can in fact be learned that we practice it day-in and day-out through things as small as letting the kids out to play in the yard or meeting someone new.  It comes mostly from what you do.  Your happiness is under your control and it is up to you to commit yourself to the things that make you happy.  

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Everyone has a baseline happiness level that can fluctuate on the daily, like a thermometer.  By setting goals that reflect your daily values (and pursuing them), it is more likely you will be able to achieve a higher level of happiness and remain there, instead of returning to baseline.  Baseline is like the average temperature for that month and as you fluctuate, based on experiences and things in your life, it is like the temperature going up or down on a daily basis.

Reading through all these different methods of finding happiness, it seems so simple.  Why hadn’t these methods been discovered earlier? What is so complicated about it?