Source: www.guardian.co.uk
UK, August 12, 2009: A public experiment involving 26,000 participants has concluded that smiling, counting your blessings and reliving happy memories is the most effective technique, of those studied, to make yourself happier. Thinking of something positive that happened the day before–even just a great cup of coffee–was by far the most effective way for people to cheer themselves up, producing a 15% boost in happiness over the control group.
Richard Wiseman, the Hertfordshire University professor who designed the research, said: “All of the techniques resulted in a reported rise in happiness.” The techniques included smiling, performing random acts of kindness, expressing gratitude about something good in their life, and focusing on something that had gone well not in the distant past, but in the last 24 hours.