Their mood might be glum more often than it's cheerful. But if they'd like to be happier and who wouldn't? Researchers have found that more than half of happiness depends on things that are actually under our control.
That's really good news because it means everyone can be happier. A big part of how happy we are depends on our mindset, the habits we practice, and the way we live each day. By learning the key ingredients of happiness, we can use them to become happier. Happiness is more than a good feeling or a yellow smiley face. It's the feeling of truly enjoying your life, and the desire to make the very best of it.
Happiness is the "secret sauce" that can help us be and do our best. Happiness is so important in our lives that it has it's own field of research called positive psychology.
Experts in this field have found that there are key things that make people happier:. We all like to have these positive feelings. Besides feeling good, positive emotions do good things for our brains and bodies. They lower stress hormones, help ease anxiety and depression, and improve our immune system. Feeling some positive emotions every day has a big effect on our happiness and well-being.
That's why it's so important to do things that give us positive feelings. Even simple actions like playing with a child or a pet or going for a walk outdoors can inspire these feelings. Knowing how to manage our negative emotions is also key to happiness. Difficult emotions are a fact of life. But the way we handle them makes all the difference. The things we're good at, and like to do, are our strengths. We all have strengths, even if we haven't discovered them yet.
Happiness increases when we discover a strength and practice it. The more we practice a strength, the better we get until we really master it. When we get really good at doing something we enjoy, we can get lost in it. That's called flow. Experiencing flow helps boost happiness.
Finding daily ways to use our strengths is a key ingredient for a happy life. The people in our lives matter. If you're 18 to 24, sex might lead to more happiness in the moment, but not in general. From the body to the soul: Close to half say religion and spirituality are very important.
And more than half say they believe there is a higher power that has an influence over things that make them happy. Beyond religion, simply belonging to an organized religious group makes people happier. And parents, here's some more for you: Most young people in school say it makes them happy.
Overwhelmingly, young people think marriage would make them happy and want to be married some day. Most also want to have kids.
Finally, when asked to name their heroes, nearly half of respondents mentioned one or both of their parents. The winner, by a nose: Mom. A much more typical description comes from Stacy Rosales, a year-old recent college graduate, who calls it "just a general stress-free feeling where I'm not really worried about anything. That makes me happy. For Chad Fiedler, 17, it's "just waking up in the morning and looking forward to what I'm going to be doing that day.
However you express, define or feel it, 65 percent of those surveyed say they're happy with the way things are going for them right now. About three-quarters — 73 percent — said their relationship with their parents makes them happy.
After family, it was relationships with friends that people mentioned most. Also confirming existing research, Twenge says, is the finding that children of divorced parents are somewhat less likely to be happy. Among year olds, 64 percent of those with parents still together said they wake up happy, compared to 47 percent of those with divorced parents. Eventually, though, marriage is a goal for most young people, with 92 percent saying they either definitely or probably want to get married.
John, the New York high school student. Still, money does play a role in happiness. Those who can't afford to buy many of the things they want are less happy with life in general. Just under half of young people think they'd be happier if they had more money, while the same percentage 49 percent say they'd be just as happy. Money isn't the most important thing, but if something happens, it can turn into it. Happiness can be influenced by genetics, personality and even luck. Measuring happiness is a relatively young discipline and, clearly, is far from perfect.
That said, the report then goes on to ask young people what factors were the most important to their happiness. As you might expect, there were variations in the priorities of young people in different countries. Although the older generations worry about exposure to the internet and social media, the pace of technological change is of less concern to Generation Z.
Generation Z, young people born between and , are the first digital natives. For them the internet has been ever present. The first DVDs were released around the time of their birth.
Facebook and the iPhone were launched when they were toddlers. Members of Generation Z are the first people who are likely to live to see the 22nd century. The report argues that this is the first real generation of global citizens, and perhaps they would agree.
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