In younger days, children dream randomly and varyingly. One day, you want to be a pop star. The next day, you desire to follow the footsteps of famous authors or maybe, be an influential leader someday. As we go through life and all its trappings, we realize that at the end of the day; the most important thing is you are contented and happy. Yes, it would be pretty amazing to live the life of the rich and the famous but would these fascinations be sustainable enough to bring pure joy in our lives. Everybody is in the course of the pursuit of happiness. Happiness is subjective. The definition is based on the preference and the gauge of individuals. However, many research on the subject identified specific facts to attain happiness.

Embrace the idea of contrasting feelings simultaneously.

As the psychologist Jonathan Adler puts it – it is when we acknowledge and accept the difficulties in life, that we can be successful in finding our psychological well-being. It is the idea that happiness is derived from identifying and accepting the vast scale of emotions both good and bad. Together with his colleague Hal Hershfield, Adler performed a study on the experience of having mixed feelings and its relation to the positive and psychological status of an individual. The results concluded that feeling happy and being gloomy altogether was an antecedent to the improvement of well-being in the following sessions. It is a mixture of the good and bad that somehow lessen the gravity of the unhappiness and allowing the opportunity to see the positive behind the adverse circumstances is in a way supportive of healthy psychological status.

Keep your happy friend close to you. Literally.

“Having few or no supportive relationships can increase the risk of depression in both men and women.” says Ben Martin, Psy.D. Therefore, it is best to have a happy friend living at least a mile away.  The Framingham multigenerational study on happiness concluded this premise. The investigation started in 1948, and it tracked three generation of Framingham residents and their offspring to identify the trends and patterns of joy in the population. These are few exciting results of the study.

Personal happiness flows through groups of people like contagious flu.

When you add happy people to your life, the tremendous positive effect, it will have. The opposite of this is sadness.

The nearness of your close friends and neighbors has the most significant effect on happiness.

Master a new skill that challenges you.

Be open to new challenges ahead despite the added stress that is pursuing something. The benefits of investing your time and energy in mastering specific skills were documented in a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies in 2009. Participants who spend hours on activities which promote competency, autonomy and social interaction reported to have decreased happiness level at that particular moment but increased in happiness when measured on a daily and hourly basis. Andrea F. Polard, PsyD explains that “Authentic happiness is relating to the entire universe. When someone relates and leaves nothing out, you can see it in the face and posture. There is a presence about a truly happy person, a look that says “Yes,” to oneself, to others, and to the world.”

Consider investing in good counseling sessions.

There are numerous posts on social media platforms stating that money, in fact, can buy happiness as long as you know where to shop. However, experts believe that your money can be more effective in achieving happiness when spent on regular and scheduled counseling sessions. Chris Boyce, a psychologist, compared sets of data from thousands of report on well-being and noted how this change transpired due to therapy or increase in income. Ryan Mebust – LMFT used to say, “We all experience obstacles in life that keep us from feeling and being whole. Many have found counseling as a way to invest in themselves, their relationships, or their families in order to support a better or new meaning on life.”