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How Much of Your Happiness Is Under Your Control?
The Happiness Pie Chart
The Happiness Pie Chart, first published in 2005, states that 50% of our happiness is defined by our genes, 40% by our activities and 10% by our life circumstances.
Recent studies on what determines happiness prove that it is possible to take deliberate steps to control our happiness, and stay happier in life. Our genes, life circumstances and our activities(and choices) in life aren't isolated factors but can influence each other.
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Key Ideas
Hedonic adaptation
Hedonic adaptation refers to people’s common tendency to return to a determined level of happiness regardless of life’s ups and downs.
Hedonic adaptation is often referred to as “the hedonic ...
Examples of Hedonic Adaptation
- People who win the lottery are likely to revert to their original levels of happiness after the novelty of the win has worn off.
- It is also true for those who are in major accidents. People generally tend to return to their pre-accident levels of happiness after a period.
- Research has found that the first bite of something delicious is experienced as more pleasurable than the subsequent bites.
How Much Control We Have
Researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky has examined this set-point:
A full 50 percent of our happiness set-point is due to genetics. 10 percent is affected primarily by circumstances like where we were born and to whom. 40 percent is subject to our influence.
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Key Ideas
3 kinds of happy lives
- The pleasant life: you fill your life with as many pleasures as you can. This has hardly any contribution to lasting fulfilment.
- The life of engagement, where y...
Habits Of Supremely Happy People
- They surround themselves with other happy people.
- They cultivate resilience.
- They appreciate simple pleasures.
- They devote some of their time to giving.
- They get immersed in activities that bring joy.
- They nix the small talk for deeper conversations.
- They make a point to listen.
- They look on the bright side.
- They make exercise a priority.
- They listen to good music.
- They spend time in nature.
- They laugh a lot.
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Key Ideas
Increasing your well-being
A growing body of research shows we can reliably raise our well-being.
Reframing the way we think about money and making financial decisions can lead to long-term gains in life satisfaction.&...
Two categories of happiness
- The level of positive emotions. This includes pride, joy, contentment, and curiosity we experience on a day-to-day basis. How happy you are on an immediate basis fluctuates by the day or even the hour.
- The overarching sense of contentment. How happy you are overall, generally remains the same. When you rate your happiness on a 10-point scale, if you are a seven kind of person, you will often stay around seven.
Buy time
Buying time by outsourcing unpleasant or disliked tasks can benefit our well-being.
Unfortunately, we're not great at valuing time over money. To change our spending habits, it helps to value time more than money. It could mean that we seek a job for its flexibility rather than the salary and prestige.