“Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated and defended privately by each person.”Īs those who have fallen in love or won a lottery can attest to, over time we all return home to that familiar level of contentment and our old self that fits all too well.Īs Parks, Schueller and Tasimi suggest in The Oxford Handbook of Happiness, what we need instead is a field of empirically supported self-help (ESS-H) rooted in research-based materials accessible to the wider public searching for proven techniques to increase happiness (2013).ġ7 Activities for Building Happiness in Life (PDF) Thanks to professor Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi, one of the founding fathers in the field of positive psychology who devoted his life to answering this question, we know today that: Science shows that many of us revert back to a set point of life satisfaction. Perhaps you even made yourself miserable chasing after happiness in all the wrong places (Gruber et al, 2011). Maybe you tried to change everything all at once and became overwhelmed and discouraged. So you attempted some random happiness boosting activities and they didn’t stick. 26 Activities for Adults to Create more Happiness in Life.28 Exercises for Finding and Building Upon Happiness.32 Proven Techniques that Increase Happiness.17 Activities for Building Happiness in Life (PDF).
