Stud­ies con­duct­ed by pos­i­tiv­i­ty psy­chol­o­gist Son­ja Lyubomirsky point to 12 things hap­py peo­ple do dif­fer­ent­ly to in­crease their lev­els of hap­pi­ness. These are things that we can start do­ing to­day to feel the ef­fects of more hap­pi­ness in our lives. (Check out her book The How of Hap­pi­ness.) I want to ho­n­our and dis­cuss each of these 12 points, be­cause no mat­ter what part of life's path we're cur­rent­ly trav­el­ling on, these 'hap­pi­ness habits' will al­ways be ap­plic­a­ble.

1. Ex­press grat­i­tude. When you ap­pre­ci­ate what you have, what you have ap­pre­ci­ates in val­ue. Kin­da cool right? So ba­si­cal­ly, be­ing grate­ful for the good­ness that is al­ready ev­i­dent in your life will bring you a deep­er sense of hap­pi­ness. And that's with­out hav­ing to go out and buy any­thing. It makes sense. We're gonna have a hard time ever be­ing hap­py if we aren't thank­ful for what we al­ready have.

2. Cul­ti­vate op­ti­mism. Win­ners have the abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture their own op­ti­mism. No mat­ter what the sit­u­a­tion, the suc­cess­ful di­va is the chick who will al­ways find a way to put an op­ti­mistic spin on it. She knows fail­ure on­ly as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow and learn a new les­son from life. Peo­ple who think op­ti­misti­cal­ly see the world as a place packed with end­less op­por­tu­ni­ties, es­pe­cial­ly in try­ing times.

3. Avoid over-think­ing and so­cial com­par­i­son. Com­par­ing your­self to some­one else can be poi­so­nous. If we're some­how 'bet­ter' than the per­son that we're com­par­ing our­selves to, it gives us an un­healthy sense of su­pe­ri­or­i­ty. Our ego in­flates – KA­BOOM – our in­ner Kanye West comes out! If we're 'worse' than the per­son that we're com­par­ing our­selves to, we usu­al­ly dis­cred­it the hard work that we've done and dis­miss all the progress that we've made. What I've found is that the ma­jor­i­ty of the time this type of so­cial com­par­i­son doesn't stem from a healthy place. If you feel called to com­pare your­self to some­thing, com­pare your­self to an ear­li­er ver­sion of your­self.

4. Prac­tice acts of kind­ness. Per­form­ing an act of kind­ness re­leas­es sero­tonin in your brain. (Sero­tonin is a sub­stance that has TREMEN­DOUS health ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing mak­ing us feel more bliss­ful.) Self­less­ly help­ing some­one is a su­per pow­er­ful way to feel good in­side. What's even cool­er about this kind­ness kick is that not on­ly will you feel bet­ter, but so will peo­ple watch­ing the act of kind­ness. How ex­tra­or­di­nary is that? By­standers will be blessed with a re­lease of sero­tonin just by watch­ing what's go­ing on. A side note is that the job of most an­ti-de­pres­sants is to re­lease more sero­tonin. Move over Pfiz­er, kind­ness is kick­ing ass and tak­ing names.

5. Nur­ture so­cial re­la­tion­ships. The hap­pi­est peo­ple on the plan­et are the ones who have deep, mean­ing­ful re­la­tion­ships. Did you know stud­ies show that peo­ple's mor­tal­i­ty rates are DOU­BLED when they're lone­ly? WHOA! There's a warm fuzzy feel­ing that comes from hav­ing an ac­tive cir­cle of good friends who you can share your ex­pe­ri­ences with. We feel con­nect­ed and a part of some­thing more mean­ing­ful than our lone­some ex­is­tence.

6. De­vel­op strate­gies for cop­ing. How you re­spond to the 'crap­tas­tic' mo­ments is what shapes your char­ac­ter. Some­times crap hap­pens – it's in­evitable. For­rest Gump knows the deal. It can be hard to come up with cre­ative so­lu­tions in the mo­ment when ma­nure is mak­ing its way up to­ward the fan. It helps to have healthy strate­gies for cop­ing pre-re­hearsed, on-call, and in your ar­se­nal at your dis­pos­al.

7. Learn to for­give. Har­bour­ing feel­ings of ha­tred is hor­ri­ble for your well-be­ing. You see, your mind doesn't know the dif­fer­ence be­tween past and present emo­tion. When you 'hate' some­one, and you're con­tin­u­ous­ly think­ing about it, those neg­a­tive emo­tions are eat­ing away at your im­mune sys­tem. You put your­self in a state of suck­erism (tech­ni­cal term) and it stays with you through­out your day.

8. In­crease flow ex­pe­ri­ences. Flow is a state in which it feels like time stands still. It's when you're so fo­cused on what you're do­ing that you be­come one with the task. Ac­tion and aware­ness are merged. You're not hun­gry, sleepy, or emo­tion­al. You're just com­plete­ly en­gaged in the ac­tiv­i­ty that you're do­ing. Noth­ing is dis­tract­ing you or com­pet­ing for your fo­cus.

9. Savour life's joys. Deep hap­pi­ness can­not ex­ist with­out slow­ing down to en­joy the joy. It's easy in a world of wild stim­uli and om­nipresent move­ment to for­get to em­brace life's en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ences. When we ne­glect to ap­pre­ci­ate, we rob the mo­ment of its mag­ic. It's the sim­ple things in life that can be the most re­ward­ing if we re­mem­ber to ful­ly ex­pe­ri­ence them.

10. Com­mit to your goals. Be­ing whole­heart­ed­ly ded­i­cat­ed to do­ing some­thing comes ful­ly-equipped with an in­ef­fa­ble force. Mag­i­cal things start hap­pen­ing when we com­mit our­selves to do­ing what­ev­er it takes to get some­where. When you're ful­ly com­mit­ted to do­ing some­thing, you have no choice but to do that thing. Counter-in­tu­itive­ly, hav­ing no op­tion – where you can't change your mind – sub­con­scious­ly makes hu­mans hap­pi­er be­cause they know part of their pur­pose.

11. Prac­tice spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. When we prac­tice spir­i­tu­al­i­ty or re­li­gion, we recog­nise that life is big­ger than us. We sur­ren­der the sil­ly idea that we are the might­i­est thing ever. It en­ables us to con­nect to the source of all cre­ation and em­brace a con­nect­ed­ness with every­thing that ex­ists. Some of the most ac­com­plished peo­ple I know feel that they're here do­ing work they're "called to do."

12. Take care of your body. Tak­ing care of your body is cru­cial to be­ing the hap­pi­est per­son you can be. If you don't have your phys­i­cal en­er­gy in good shape, then your men­tal en­er­gy (your fo­cus), your emo­tion­al en­er­gy (your feel­ings), and your spir­i­tu­al en­er­gy (your pur­pose) will all be neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed.

Did you know that stud­ies con­duct­ed on peo­ple who were clin­i­cal­ly de­pressed showed that con­sis­tent ex­er­cise rais­es hap­pi­ness lev­els just as much as an an­it-de­pres­sant? Not on­ly that, but here's the dou­ble wham­my... Six months lat­er, the peo­ple who par­tic­i­pat­ed in ex­er­cise were less like­ly to re­lapse be­cause they had a high­er sense of self-ac­com­plish­ment and self-worth.