Stop trying to force that frown upside down. Instead, try the joy-building tips experts really use
By Angela Haupt
If anyone know the secret to happiness, it’s surely the people who have dedicated their careers to studying it. The first thing they’ll tell you? Being happy all the time isn’t a feasible—or even desirable—goal.
“It’s not a yellow smiley face,” says positive-psychology expert Stellap Grizont, founder and CEO of Woopaah, which focuses on workplace well-being. “It’s being true to yourself and all the emotions that come up.” Grizont was among 18 leading happiness experts surveyed by TIME about their daily habits, and the professional insights they’re most likely to apply to their personal lives. The results are illuminating—and could help all of us boost our mood and well-being.
The meaning of happiness is, to an extent, subjective. But nearly every expert we surveyed emphasized the same cocktail of ingredients: a sense of control and autonomy over one’s life, being guided by meaning and purpose, and connecting with others. And they largely agreed that happiness can be measured, strengthened, and taught. “The more you notice how happy or how grateful you are, the more it grows,” Grizont says.
Other questions we asked—like “is happiness a choice?”—sparked disagreement. Most experts landed somewhere in the middle, especially since countless external variables influence mood. “Part of it is a choice, part of it is innate,” says Tal Ben-Shahar, co-founder of the online Happiness Studies Academy. “And the part that is a choice is the choice to work hard at it.”
Experts were divided on whether happiness can be bought. As author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin put it, “Money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy many things that contribute mightily,” such as exciting experiences. Spending money on others is also linked to happiness. Still, many of the most reliable ways to increase happiness levels are free, like meditating and practicing compassion, gratitude, and altruism.
One of the most striking lessons centered on the importance of acknowledging negative emotions, rather than suppressing them. The idea that dodging resentment, fear, or anger is healthy is one of the major misconceptions about happiness, they agreed. We err when we assume that focusing on happiness means acting like a “Pollyanna,” ignoring “the very real difficulties of life,” says Judith T. Moskowitz, a professor of medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Instead, the experts said, we should
