Raise your lasting level of happiness by developing your happy habits.

As you start the New Year with shiny new resolutions, think about your habits. In their best-selling book,Influencer, the authors say that the first place to start on any major change- personal or social- is to identify the key behaviors that lead to the change you want. These are the habits of thought, habits of speech and habits of action.

Nobody is happy all the time, nor would it be healthy or appropriate to be happy all the time. Happiness is an emotion. It is a spontaneous feeling that results from our circumstances, thoughts, and actions. Research in the field of Positive Psychology finds we all have a happiness set point and when outside circumstances are not creating other kinds of emotions, we tend to come back to this default set point.

Research also shows that we can change our happiness set point. We can significantly increase our default happy level by:

• developing thought patterns of appreciation, gratitude, optimism, compassion and curiosity
• engaging in activities that use our strengths to accomplish worthy results
• laughing, smiling, singing and dancing
• having friends and spending time with them

Raise your lasting level of happiness by developing your happy habits .