11 Ways To Be Happier

Text your parents, spray your favourite scent and set yourself bite-sized goals. With the help of some happiness experts, Arielle Tchiprout finds out how to fill each day with joy

We often think of happiness as a destination, lit up by sunshine in the distance. We often convince ourselves that we’ll only get there when everything falls into place: landing the dream job, buying the perfect house or falling in love. We see it as something to strive towards, to toil and suffer for, but that reaching it will make everything worthwhile. But, actually, happiness is not marked by an ‘X’ on the floor. It’s fleeting and unstable, but in the best way possible: you can cultivate it each day, bringing little pockets of positivity into your life at every turn.

Here at Good Housekeeping, we’re firm believers in finding the joy in the everyday – because life isn’t so much about big celebratory milestones as it is about unremarkable days threaded together with string. Yet we’re the first to acknowledge that happiness doesn’t always come naturally. ‘Human brains have a negativity bias,’ agrees positive psychologist and author Miriam Akhtar (positivepsychologytraining.co.uk). ‘Being able to notice danger is essential to our survival, so we tend to notice what’s wrong before what’s good.’ This means we have to make a conscious effort to think differently – to notice the positive and play an active role in creating our own bliss. As this can be easier said than done, we asked some experts for their best advice to be happier, every day.

1 DO A COLOUR COMMUTE