How To Be Happy Even If Your Life Has Fallen Apart!

Author C Brooks of Harvard Business School studies happiness! Why does

Research found that nearly 50% of your happiness comes from your genetics and your upbringing. There are certain personality traits that make you more predisposed to negative, or positive emotions.

Anxiety and depression is a warning sign from the body that something is not working right! On the other hand, some say I’ll be happy once I get married, or once I become a millionaire, or some other life goal.

Once you achieve some major life goal, this only makes you happier for about 6 months then your mood returns to your baseline level of happiness.

We know that your circumstances only impacts about 25% of your happiness. The research shows that you are in control of the remaining 25% of your happiness.

You lose your retirement in the stock market! It sucks but it does not have to define you because you are in control of 25% of your happiness. In the 1929 Great Depression it was reported the stock brokers who lost everything jumped out of the skyscraper killing themselves.

Fatherly.com says that 10 men a day end their life after a divorce which is 3x higher than divorced women.

(Link: https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/psychological-effects-divorce-fathers-men-suicide#:~:text=Divorce%20statistics%20can%20be%20wildly,of%20preventable%20and%20treatable%20diseases.

People give up and end their lives because there is an equation for happiness these individuals do not understand how to control the part of the happiness they are in control of.

Professor Dan Gilbert that our circumstances only have a limited impact on your overall happiness. The research looked at a group of people who got into an accident and were put into a wheel because they could not walk on their own anymore, and then they looked at a group of lottery winners. Who do you think is happier?

We have a baseline of happiness so when something goes really bad in life like losing the ability to walk we may get really depressed, or if things go really good for us like winning the lottery we get really excited however, our circumstances only impact our happiness for about 6 months in most cases. This study found that after 1 year the lottery winner and those who lost the ability were just as happy as each other which shows in most cases, no matter what happens to us we will return to the same level of happiness.

There are four things that have the biggest impact on your overall happiness. They are 1) Faith 2) Family 3) Community and 4) Work! People waste their time on dopamine-boosting activities trying to chase happiness but these things do not give you fulfillment.

Research shows that when we focus on the 4 areas of our life that we have control over. We gain greater control of our overall life and have greater control of our circumstances and end up in control of 40% of our overall happiness.