Health & Happiness is difficult to define and even harder to

measure. We experience it as a combination of

elements, in the same way that one wheel or spring

Happiness inside a watch doesn't keep time — it is a result of

the synchronicity of the whole. As a relative state,
happiness is what psychologists call our "subjective
well-being" and, fortunately for us, it is a state that
we can actively change for the better. Here are 18
ways to start.
aqil luthfan | www.time.com

Count Your Blessings

Count your blessings — but not everyday. Sonja Lyubomirsky, an
experimental psychologist at UC Riverside, found that people who
once a week wrote down five things they were grateful for were
happier than those who did it three times a week. "It's an issue of
timing or frequency," says Lyubomirsky, "When people do anything
too often it loses the freshness and meaning. You need to have optimal timing."
Lyubomirsky added that it has to feel right. She tried to count her blessings and
hated it. "I found it hokey. It didn't work for me. Just like a diet program, what you
do has to fit your lifestyle, personality and goals." In essence, gratitude might not be
for everyone. But if it is, another exercise is to think of a person who has been kind
to you that you've wanted to thank — a teacher, mentor or parent — and write a
letter, once a week to different individuals over two months. You don't even have to
send it to feel happier.

Hear the Music

Whether regarded as an evolutionary accident that piggybacked on
language or as the gateway to our emotions, music activates parts of
the brain that can trigger happiness, releasing endorphins similar to
the ways that sex and food do. Music can also relax the body,
sometimes into sleep as it stimulates the brain's release of melatonin.
A study of older adults who listened to their choice of music during
outpatient eye surgery showed that they had significantly lower heart
rates and blood pressure, and their hearts did not work as hard as
those who underwent surgery without music. A second study, of
patients undergoing colonoscopy, showed that listening to their
selection of music reduced their anxiety levels and lessened the dosage
required for sedation.

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 Nurture Your Spirituality
Survey after survey shows that people with strong religious faith —
of any religion or denomination — are happier than those who are
irreligious. David Myers, a social psychologist at Michigan's Hope
College, says that faith provides social support, a sense of purpose
and a reason to focus beyond the self, all of which help root people in their
communities. That seems reason enough to get more involved at the local church,
temple or mosque. For the more inwardly focused, deep breathing during
meditation and prayer can slow down the body and reduce stress, anxiety and
physical tension to allow better emotions and energy to come forward.

Move Your Body

We've all heard about a "runner's high," but there are plenty of
other ways to achieve that feeling. Dance. Play a sport. Work out as
hard as you can. Take a walk so your stress will take a hike. Moving
your body releases endorphins, the quintessential feel-good
chemicals found in your brain. How endorphin release is triggered
by exercise is somewhat of a controversial science because
researchers don't know if it is caused by the positive emotion felt
upon meeting a physical challenge or from the exertion itself. Either
way, physical motion can provide a rush of good energy that can lift
a mood, be it anxiety or mild depression, and it's a good way to
keep healthy.

Laugh Big
Be it a slew of good jokes, a slapstick comedy or laughing yoga, find something to
give you a good hearty laugh that brings tears to the eyes or a giggle fit that makes
the sides of your body ache. People are 30 times more likely to laugh in groups than
alone and, not surprisingly, laughter is associated with helping to
develop person-to-person connections through a feedback loop
characterized by laughter, social bonding and more laughter.
Laughter, like so many other endorphin-triggers, helps to reduce
certain stress hormones and, while it might be contagious, it
strengthens your immune system rather than weakening it.

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 Do Something Nice
for Someone Else
Hold a door open for someone at the bank, give someone directions
if they look lost or make a point to compliment three people on
your way to work. Small or big, directed at friends or strangers,
random acts of kindness make the person performing the kind act
happier when they're grouped together, according to Sonja Lyubomirsky, an
experimental psychologist at UC Riverside. Doing a considerate thing for another
person five times in one day made the doer happier than if they had spread out
those five acts over one week. Lyubomirsky explains that because we all perform
acts of kindness naturally, it seems to please us more when we're more conscious of
it. There are social rewards, too, when people respond positively.

Seek Positive Emotion as a Path to Success

Happiness can lead to success, rather than just the other way around.
Happy individuals are predisposed to seek out new opportunities and set
new goals. After reviewing data of 225 studies gathered from more than
275,000 individuals, a team of psychologists concluded that while
previous research assumed that happiness stemmed from success and
accomplishment, happiness is often a result of positive emotions.
Success is the result of many factors, including physical health,
intelligence, family and expertise.

Identify With Your Heritage

Whether it's getting comfy with a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, dancing at a
Japanese Obon festival or scarfing down a hot dog at Coney Island, embrace your
culture. Appreciating one's culture creates and strengthens bonds with others who
share that culture and also allows one to identify and appreciate cultural difference.
A recent study showed that adolescents of Mexican and Chinese
ethnicity maintained feelings of happiness despite daily stress
when they had a strong sense of cultural identity. In other
research, psychologists found an association between stable
cultural identity and overall positive emotion in African American
and Native American communities.

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 Use a Happy Memory as a Guide
Learn to scan your memory bank for your strengths, talents,
passions, interests, practical coping skills, and earlier potential —
whether it's actualized or not. Scanning this memory bank and
gleaning material that can be used to reinvent yourself to be happier
is key, says Barbara Becker-Holstein, psychologist and author of
Enchanted Self: A Positive Therapy. For example, someone who would like to be
more altruistic can scan their past and know that they didn't like Girl Scouts in
elementary school. That crosses off being a PTA mother. But they might remember
that as a child they enjoyed collecting soda bottles and giving the money to the local
fire station where they knew the firefighters. That person might consider giving
money and time to a local group where they can socialize with people rather than
mailing in a check to a distant organization. "Looking at one's personal style, tastes
and interests as we look for ways to be happy today is very important," says Becker-
Holstein.

Play the Part of an Optimist

Optimism is a learned skill and there are a variety of
ways to acquire it, says psychologist Mary Ann
Troiani, co-author of Spontaneous Optimism.
Through her research, Troiani has come up with
three things that you can do to enhance your sense
of optimism. First, straighten out your body before
your emotions by keeping a straight body posture,
taking big steps and walking quickly with your
shoulders back and your head up. "People who are
pessimistic walk slowly with small steps and their head down," she says. Second,
change your tone of voice so that it is cheerful and full of energy. Third, use upbeat
or happier words, such as "challenge" rather than "problem," or think of
"opportunities" rather than "losses." "Positive thoughts and behavior have a positive
impact on the brain's biochemistry," she says. "[They] boost your serotonin levels
and signal that you're happy. Your brain will catch up to you." Troiani reminds us: it
takes about 4 to 6 weeks to really change a habit.

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 Try New Things
Stop putting off seeing the aurora lights, warming up in the hot
springs of Greenland or learning a new instrument — just do it. If
you often do one thing that makes you happy, then try another.
Psychologist Rich Walker of Winston-Salem State University looked
at 30,000 event memories and over 500 diaries, ranging from
durations of 3 months to 4 years, and says that people who engage
in a variety of experiences are more likely to retain positive emotions
and minimize negative ones than people who have fewer
experiences. Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, at the University of
North Carolina Chapel Hill, studies her broaden-and-build hypothesis
of positive emotion. Her research suggests that the optimal ratio of positive to
negative emotion in humans is above 3 to 1 and below 11 to 1. Walker has observed
that once the ratio of positive to negative events hit 1 to 1, it opens the door to
potential disorders, such as anxiety and depression.

Tell Your Story to Someone

Talking about the good and bad things that
happen can lead to happiness — even if it is from
opposite ends of the phone line. In a controlled
lab experiment, psychologist Rich Walker of
Winston-Salem State University found that the reasons are two-fold: people tend to
emphasize positive emotions and mitigate negative ones when telling a story, since
memory's natural bias is to keep tabs on the good stuff and gradually lose the
emotional intensity of a bad event; and the process of storytelling can affect how
one feels about what happened even up to a week later. In other words, talking
about a negative experience made the emotional intensity of that memory fade
faster than if the event had not been recounted. Walker says that storytelling works
best when there is a lot of audience diversity — it helps to tell the story many times
to a variety of people.

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Balance Work and Home
The grin of our society is blue-toothed. With
BlackBerrys and corporate email at home, we are
tethered to technology unlike any previous
generation. This newfound flexibility between our
work and private lives works for some people but is
problematic for others. In 2003, Michigan State
University researchers found that those who establish
boundaries between work and home are more
connected to their families and have less conflict than
those who integrate the two. The researchers divided
people into what they call integrators and separators
and suggested that knowing the appropriate
boundaries between work and home can have an
impact and improve happiness.

Be Like the Danes:

Keep Expectations Realistic

Last year, the first world map of happiness was

produced, and Denmark came out on top. For more than
30 years, the nation has ranked first in European
satisfaction surveys. Researchers in the British Medical
Journal tried to understand why the Danes felt more
satisfied than the Swedes or Finns, who share similar
aspects of culture, and came up with two plausible
explanations: the lasting impact of the Danes' victory in
the 1992 European Football Championship has kept
them in a state of euphoria since; and the nation, while
satisfied, has shown low expectations for the coming
year, unlike the Greeks and the Italians who rank low on
satisfaction. While there were other reasons that
contributed to the satisfaction of the Danes, one thing is
clear: the higher one's expectations, the further they fall.

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 Make Time
Society is plagued by time bankruptcy. But
what if people asserted more control over
their time to optimize their use of it?
"Maybe you need to burn bridges, discard habits or situations that waste time and
avoid emotional vampires," says Mary Ann Troiani, co-author of Spontaneous
Optimism. "It's like house-cleaning at that point." Psychologists will say prioritize, set
realistic daily goals that fit into the bigger picture and some time might be
recovered. Troiani usually asks one pointed question to shock her clients out of their
rut: How would you feel in two or three years if you still feel this way? "People sit
there like a deer in headlights," she says. Her response: picture and imagine what
you want to feel like. Maybe set aside two nights in your calendar to focus on those
things that you'd like to spend more time on. Or as she puts it: cut the chase.

Visualize Happiness
We are unique creatures in that we can
mentally simulate situations by remembering
the past and visualizing the future. We can also
play a hand at perhaps creating the future — at
least in terms of preparing our emotional state
for what may come. It's a valuable tool and one
that can lead to happiness when applied to
specific goals. There is much research behind
visualization and emotional changes, as it has
been shown that positive thoughts have an impact on the brain's biochemistry.
Many psychologists ask people to imagine or picture what they would like in their
life, creating a mental state that makes the person think that it is achievable. "If you
experience that visualization with your eyes closed, your mind doesn't know if it's
real or unreal," says Mary Ann Troiani, co-author of Spontaneous Optimism.
"Neuropsychological ways makes them feel as though they have it and tricks the
mind into thinking they have [what they are visualizing] now. It makes them more
confident about it."

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 Smile
Go ahead. It won't hurt you. It might actually
make you happier, too. Based on the
psychology that a person feels whatever
emotion they are acting at the moment, you
will probably feel better if you smile. To avoid what is called cognitive dissonance, in
which our thoughts and actions don't match up, our minds react to the change in our
facial expression to bring our beliefs in line with our behavior. And, like laughter, it's
contagious. If you smile, chances are that those around you will too.

Marry Happy
Since there may be no point in marrying rich (see
previous), then marry happy. Research shows that
depressed singles receive greater psychological benefit —
from things such as intimacy and emotional closeness —
from getting married than those who are not depressed.
And for the married population, first of all,
congratulations: people in committed relationships have
been shown to be happier than those who aren't, despite
how satisfying their marriages actually are. Research done
by an economist at the University of Warwick suggests that
if you're married to someone who is happy, then you are
happy as well. The research concludes that happiness, like
material things in a marriage, is shared. Awww...