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FEATURES | EASTERN HORIZON 39

Prof Laurie Santos (far right) led a panel on happiness at the World You don’t need to smile all the time,
Economic Forum says Emiliana Simon-Thomas (though
she did smile for this picture)

• Social interaction with people, Tips for happiness
even strangers, makes you feel • Make more time for social
happier connection even if it’s with a
• Being grateful for what you have stranger
improves how we feel • Do nice things for others,
• Feeling our lives have a purpose even small things like making
has been linked to a healthier, someone a coffee will improve
Katie is a BBC business website editor and reporter.
longer life your happiness
• Count your blessings - think
Humans have always wondered about what you are grateful for
about how to improve their • Get enough sleep Tsoknyi Rinpoche advises taking a
happiness, but for a long time • Stay in the moment - when our break from texting and constantly
thought they had no control over it. mind wanders we are less happy checking emails

• Meditate - people who meditate
The root stem of happiness is tend to be happier
“happenstance” - chance, luck or • Stop criticising yourself - it
That means it’s OK to feel negative
fortune. makes you feel worse and you
emotions, such as sadness or anger,
will achieve less
but that we should have enough
Research shows that while genetics • Don’t keep chasing more
resilience to bounce back.
plays a large part, accounting money - after you reach $75,000
“Many of us think we need to be
for half our happiness, what we (£57,000), studies show earning
enthusiastic and smiling all the
do each day accounts for 40%, more won’t make you any
time. We don’t have that kind of life.
with just 10% down to our life happier
Things happen,” she says.
circumstances.
It’s OK to feel sad
But how do we know if we’re happy?
“We have the potential to acquire She thinks a big problem is that
happiness even when we were not we often don’t understand what
Mrs Simon-Thomas says most
born happy,” says Emiliana Simon- being happy means. She says it is a
measurements are based on
Thomas, director of the Greater specific emotion, usually in reaction
self-assessment but appear to be
Good Science Center at Berkeley, to something, and comes and goes.
broadly accurate.
who is running the workshop. A general sense of wellbeing is a
more realistic aim, she says.