Birds of a feather flock together. If you want to be happier you need to associate with other happy people. You need to spend a minimum of one hour a week with other happy people. You also need to reduce the time you spend with unhappy people to less than one hour per week. Happy people are generally wealthy, successful people. They are happier than everyone else because they are able to create more happiness events in their lives. But what if you don’t know any wealthy, successful people? What do you do? Where do you find them? You find them on boards and committees of churches, synagogues, food banks, business associations, community sports associations et. al. Many board and committee members of charitable, civic or community organizations are made up of wealthy, successful people.

Spending more time with happy people and less time with unhappy people will change your mindset from negative to positive. It reprograms your mind. Plus, when you make new acquaintances with other happy people they will, in time, introduce you to their relationships, who also happen to be other happy people.

Have you ever noticed some people are always upbeat, positive, enthusiastic and seem happy? Being in a positive, upbeat emotional state fosters happiness. You may think they are just genetically predisposed to be this way, but you’d be wrong. Wealthy, successful people in my five-year study on the daily habits of the rich have certain Happiness Habits that create this positive mindset. Somewhere along the line these people discovered one of the secrets to happiness: Practicing gratitude. There is always something to be grateful for. Practicing gratitude, every day, provides a reality check on our lives. It stops negative thinking in its tracks. It changes our thinking from negative to positive. When we force ourselves to reflect daily on all of the blessings we have in life (health, a job, a home, a family, friends etc), it stops us from thinking about all the things we don’t have and this changes our perspective. A prerequisite for success in life is to function from a positive mindset. In the world of the wealthy, negative people are not allowed. For the next month make it a habit to practice gratitude. Every day express gratitude for five things you are grateful for in life. Create an attitude of gratitude every day and, in time, you will add another Happiness Habit to your life. The more Happiness Habits you have, the more happiness events you create and the happier you will be overall.

What is meditation? While conscious, our brains vibrate at a rate of twenty cycles per second. This is known as the Beta state. Meditation is the act of slowing your brain vibrations down to the Alpha state – ten cycles per second. Alpha is a conscious state that precedes sleep. It is also considered the creative state, the state where creative ideas flourish; where the subconscious parts of your brain (brain stem and limbic system) are awakened intentionally. Many great inventors and successful entrepreneurs found answers to many of their questions only when their brains were relaxed. To meditate you need to simply close your eyes and relax your mind and body, letting all thoughts pass by like railroad cars on a train track. You can meditate for as little as one minute but many people will meditate for longer periods of time. For people new to meditation I recommend one to three minutes a day.

Why is meditation important?  Meditation is good brain management. It’s like a vacation for the brain. It reduces stress, triggers the creative forces within our subconscious and increases telomerase (an enzyme that keeps telomeres healthy. Telomeres close off each chromosome’s DNA. When telomeres fray, cells die. This is why we age. Our cells stop  dividing and die and this leads to aging).

For the next month, set a goal of meditating for sixty seconds every day in the morning, after waking up, or at night, right before bedtime. It will make you feel more relaxed and induce a state of happiness. Every time you meditate you create a Happiness Event. Overall happiness is dependent on the number of happiness events you have in life. Those with the most Happiness Events in their lives are happier overall than everyone else.

Believe it or not, learning something new is a Happiness Habit. When we learn something new, the brain creates new neural synapses (connections), and this neural stimulation creates a physiological feeling of self-satisfaction and increased confidence. We simply feel better about ourselves. This is not an accident. These physiological feelings of happiness are the brain’s way of rewarding us for engaging in good brain behavior. The brain’s secondary purpose (the first being to keep us alive) is to learn. When we learn new things, we actually increase the mass of our brain (new neurons = new mass). The brain is one of the very few internal organs whose mass increases by use (the stomach being the other obvious one).  The more we engage in learning, the more the brain will reward us with feelings of happiness. Each time you learn something new, therefore, you are creating a happiness event. The winners of the happiness contest in life are those with the most happiness events. Set a goal, for the next month, to create 30 happiness events by learning something new every day. Devote 20-30 minutes each day, for the next month, reading something that will help you on the job or increase your knowledge in some hobby or passion you might have.  Learn and be happy.

Happiness Habits are automated Happiness Activities that create Happiness Events. The more Happiness Habits we have the more Happiness Events we have in life and the happier we will be are overall. One of the keys, therefore, to overall happiness, is to make happiness a habit. A simple way to do this is to add one Happiness Habit every month. Exercising is a Happiness Habit. While the activity itself is not a happiness event, the activity, when completed, creates happiness. We feel happy because we’ve done something that is good (healthy) for our body. The more you exercise, the happier you will be. Since we are all after the same thing – happiness – it makes sense to engage in more frequent happiness activities.

Set a goal of exercising for one month. After a month of repetitive exercise, the brain will begin to create a new neural pathway. Eventually, with repetition, this new neural pathway will become a habit. It takes anywhere from 18 days to 254 days for a habit to form. What makes a habit form quicker is emotion. Happiness is an emotion. Once daily exercise becomes a habit, you will not be able to stop exercising even if you wanted to because habits, once formed, are hard to break.

Continuing my march through the Happiness Habits, I move on to the next: pursuing one learning goal every month, related to your job. There is so much to learn in the world. The true value of knowledge, however, is in its application. Knowledge, without action, is like a boat without water to sail in. You need to apply that knowledge somehow. The Happiness Habit of pursuing one learning goal every month, studying one topic related to your job, guarantees that you will create at least twelve Happiness Activities a year.

But how does learning something new about your industry or job translate into happiness? While the activity itself may not bring you instant happiness, the knowledge gained and then applied will bring you lasting happiness. You will begin to see more opportunities at work that will help you do a better job for your boss, colleagues, customers or clients. The real reward is in the benefits that accrue from pursuing this Happiness Habit. And if you continue to apply what you’ve learned, the knowledge will stay with you forever and continue to reward you with happiness. There is long-term happiness in learning.

In my study of the daily habits of the rich and poor I found that 72% of the wealthy volunteer five or more hours per month. And they teach this Rich Habit to their children. There are a number of reasons the wealthy volunteer including: giving back to the community, to meet new people, to grow stronger relationships, as well as business networking motivations, but one byproduct of volunteering is that volunteers derive an emotional satisfaction in helping others inside and outside their community. Volunteering is a happiness activity. I discovered from my research that wealthy individuals engage in more happiness activities than others and it is the frequency of these happiness activities that create an overall feeling of happiness. Rich or poor, if you want to increase your overall happiness you need to engage in more happiness activities in life. You need to make happiness a habit.

In my five-year study, 93% of the wealthy who had mentors attributed their wealth to their mentors. This is an eye opening statistic because it trumpets the financial importance of finding a mentor in life. Those that do find a mentor, realize great success in life.

Mentorship is a two-way street. The benefits accrue on both sides. Mentors learn from those they mentor, they create devoted, cult-like followers, they benefit financially (mentors and their mentees typically work together) but more importantly, the act of mentoring others is a happiness activity. It creates happiness for both parties.

Happiness is a habit. There are certain Happiness Habits successful people practice almost every day. I touched on a few last week (Practiced Optimism and Living in the Moment). This week I’m going to shine a light on some of the others. Today’s Happiness Habit involves conquering fear. Fear holds you back from taking on new challenges in life. It sidelines most of us for most of our lives. What to do about it? This week do one thing that scares you, big or small. Spend the entire week overcoming just one fear. Overcoming fear will alter your thinking. It will reprogram your mind from negative to positive. It will increase your level of confidence. Doing something that scares your will take you out of your comfort zone and make you anxious and nervous. It will also exhilarate you. Human beings were not intended to be slaves to our fears. Our core fears reside in the limbic system portion of our brains. The neocortex, the most recent evolutionary portion of our brain, has the ability to consciously overcome our fears. When you take on a fear, both parts of the brain begin to compete against each other. The neocortex is far superior in terms of size. It has billions more neurons than the limbic system. It can easily overcome any fear. So go out this week and scare yourself. Become the master of fear and not its slave.

In my study I found that successful, wealthy people were happier than everyone else because they make a habit of happiness. One of the happiness habits they practice is living in the moment. But what does living in the moment really mean? Have you ever been at a party, fun event or family gathering and your mind was elsewhere, thinking about work, projects that need to get done, issues you have with people, worrying over your finances, bills, etc.? What a waste of a good happiness event. Living in the moment means clearing your mind of all thoughts and enjoying the moment, enjoying the present. When you live in the moment you create a happiness event. When you allow other thoughts to interfere with a happiness event, you lose that happiness event forever. The key to overall happiness in life is accumulating more happiness events. You do this by thinking about nothing but the present. You do this by living in the moment.