Happiness can be learned! And here’s how…

Happiness can be learned! And here’s how…

Happiness…some of us are born with it and some, unfortunately, aren’t.

That’s partly true; but it’s also important to note that the happiness we’re born with is NOT 100% of the picture.

A significant part of happiness is learned; and/or determined by the choices we make each and every day.

This is fantastic news because it means we can all get better at it and we can all enjoy more of it. So here are some skills you can learn if you want more happiness in your life; and let’s face it, who doesn’t?

The skills you should learn if you want to be happy, according to research

via Inc by Jessica Stillman

Sometimes happiness can feel like a matter of luck, circumstance, or hereditary predisposition, but as I’ve covered here before, happiness is really a set of skills.

“All of the work that we and other colleagues [have done] leads us to this inevitable conclusion …well-being is fundamentally no different than learning to play the cello,” Richard Davidson, founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin and author of “The Emotional Life of Your Brain” has explained.

“If one practices the skills of well-being, one will get better at it.”

Which is a lovely though in some ways — if happiness consists of skills to be learned, then your mood and outlook is largely within your control.

But what skills exactly do you need to master? Richardson breaks down the key competencies for mental well being into four broad areas, but while that’s helpful to understand his ideas generally, his categories are too broad to be really actionable.

Knowing the resilience is a key skill for happiness won’t really help you cultivate it. But a new, detailed inventory of happiness skills from the Greater Good Science Center just might. The long list of skills from researcher Tchiki Davis is a great starting point to evaluate how you might improve your happiness levels.

Here it is, divided into several subheadings (the links to additional resources are largely mine)…

…click HERE to read the full & original article