Then where does happiness come from? What actually determines happiness? Is everyone familiar with the present? Dalai Lama? Well, the Dalai Lama had something interesting to say about the purpose of our lives. And quote, unquote, as you can see, the purpose of our lives is to be happy.

Do you agree with this statement? It can be debated. But ask yourself, why do you want what you want? If you ask yourself, why enough times, the final answer might be to be happy. If you want to be rich. Well, why do you want to be rich?

It makes me happy. Why do you want this new car? It'll make me happy. Why do you want these other things? Why do you want success to be happy? Well, it seems that usually it comes down to that one answer.

So the question is what actually makes people happy? And the answer is simple. You choose to be happy. Okay? This is obviously oversimplifying things, but it's kind of true. Happiness doesn't depend on your outside circumstances, as much as you might think.

It's not too external. The best way to find happiness is to look inside yourself. But that requires you to do two specific things, thoughts and actions. But hold on, we'll come to that soon. Now I've got a quick disclaimer for you, my students. This lesson is intended to help you identify what typically leads to happier lives, and how to take steps to become happier individuals.

However, it is not intended as a solution for those with serious mental conditions, such as chronic depression, whereas appropriate treatment from a medical professional is advised. Now having said that, let's go to a man named Edward f Diener American psychologist, professor and author before looking at the science of what actually makes people happy, let's take a look at what is called your happiness baseline. We all have a happiness baseline. This is our general long term happiness. Now, there will always be good days. And then there will be bad days, things that happen to us that make us happy things that happen to us that take away that happiness and make us sad.

And so our daily happiness constantly fluctuates around this baseline. The important thing here is happiness always returns to a baseline, it always returns to your baseline. In fact, research by Ed Diener, as we just saw, has found that even after such a drastic life changes, such as winning the lottery, or becoming paralyzed. Happiness will eventually return to its baseline. This can be seen in history of those who actually won the lottery, they became really happy. But they sort of got used to it in return to whatever baseline they had.

The same thing has happened with specifically people who were paralyzed, and of course, become incredibly depressed. But as you work things out, it takes a little bit more time to return to that baseline. And this baseline isn't all of us yet. We all have different baselines. And if you're interested in your particular baseline, you can go to Penn State's University website, type in authentic happiness.sh s.up and n.edu. Then go to questionnaires.

And over here on the right, we have authentic happiness inventory. If you go there, sign up, you'll get a better idea about where you specifically are and what your baseline might be. But that's up to you. If you want to take the time, going back to our lesson, we still want to answer the question What determines happiness? Well, let's take a look at Dr. Sonia young Mirsky think i'm pronouncing that wrong, but I tried. She's an American professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and author of the bestseller the howl of happiness, a scientific approach to getting the life you want a book of strategies backed by scientific research that can be used to increase happiness.

She shown that 50% of our happiness is actually from genetics. Yes, that's a gamble we all go through. Some people just win the lotto here and others don't. And unfortunately, we can't do much about the DNA side. But you do have control over the other 50% to a good extent. The next here in yellow 10% is our external circumstances include Money status, jobs, cars, houses and things.

But don't get misled. You don't need much of these for happiness. And the science shows that a lot of money doesn't lead to happiness studies compared people to the Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans with the general population and found that they were only slightly happier than the average, with 37% being less happy than the average American. That's pretty interesting research, huh? So what does this leave us with the other 40% thoughts and actions and it's this section we have most control over scientifically, this is where happiness is most influenced, and where you should concentrate if you're looking to be happier. This is where you can focus to change your happiness baseline.

That 40% is where we are going to focus in this lesson and give you the option to increase that baseline, but the work is up to you. Let's recap what determines happiness. Number one, we took a look and at what's called your happiness baseline, it stays a level usually and we fluctuate up and down, but we usually return to that baseline. Then we took a look at what determines happiness. Now we have genetics about 50%. Then things are external the things in life which is about 10%.

But what we have most control over the remaining 40% thoughts and actions. And finally, now we know that it's up to us we have control about raising that baseline if we so choose. Okay, so let's get ready to take a look at the thoughts involved to help you raise that baseline.