Five things you can do to be happier right now
What makes you happy? Getting a good grade in school; being accepted into your school’s football team; winning a competition or not having any homework until the end of the year might seem like the key to happiness. 
But according to happiness expert Professor Paul Dolan, making simple changes are the key to bring joy into your life. Dolan – a professor at the London School of Economics and a government advisor – claims that many of the things people believe will make them happy are temporary and can actually alter lives in a negative way.
Instead Dolan identified five ways that can immediately make us happier. They are:
- Listening to our favourite music
- Spending five more minutes with someone we like
- Going outdoors
- Helping someone else
- Having a new experience
It seems so simple, doesn’t it? That’s because the importance, Dolan emphasizes, is to change what you do, not how you think.
This is probably why the ‘Happy List’ honours otherwise-unknown and unsung individuals who give rather than take, whose kindness and bravery make the world a better place to live in. The Happy List is a collection of 100 inspirational heroes, compiled by UK’s newspaper, The Independent.
This year’s list includes a foster mum who has cared for over 1200 children over four decades; a teenage cerebral palsy sufferer who sailed the English Channel against all odds, a woman who has cleared tones of plastic from Britain’s beaches and a barman who ran a marathon everyday to fundraise money.
So remember, most things we think will make us happy won’t. We’re really always happier if we are focusing on the person we are with and the thing we are doing right now. Why worry about the future when we should be enjoying the present?
(All images - credit: Wikimedia Commons and Pixabay under Creative Commons licence)
