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The science of happiness has revealed happiness to be essential to enabling you to fully thrive. While happiness itself can be fleeting, it is the deeper aspects of happiness associated with joy, serenity and contentment that set you up for longerlasting health and wellbeing. Is happiness something you dismiss as being too soft and squidgy to be taken seriously?

What if happiness could be sustainable?

This is not a pipe dream. The research suggests there is great potential for this to become part of our daily lives in just the same way as we seek sustainable food sources, energy, and clothing.

Dr Catherine O’Brien from Cape Breton University has defined sustainable happiness as:

“Happiness that contributes to individual, community or global well-being and does not exploit other people, the environment, or future generations.”

In other words, it’s about creating wellbeing for all.

As we move into the post-Covid era, this is the time to seize the opportunity to make it a greater reality – and create a kinder, more tolerant, and equitable world through the choices we make. Sustainable happiness starts by seeking out more positive emotion.

This shifts your psychology to want to seek out more things that you can see or believe will lead to more positive consequences and sets up a positive feedback loop. This is not toxic positivity where negative emotions are ignored or suppressed, but an active process to nudge your happiness set-point upwards.

Experiencing more positive emotions leads to sustainable happiness and has a powerful effect on your health and wellbeing.

1. Happiness protects you from heart disease.

Being happy is linked to lower blood pressure, lower heart rate and better heart rate variability reducing you risk for developing heart disease.

2. Happiness strengthens the immune system.

Happier people are less at risk of succumbing to the latest virus doing the rounds, recover more quickly and have a better immune response following vaccination. Being happy will help you get the most out of your annual flu jab.

3. Happiness helps you manage stress better.

Happier people have 23% lower cortisol levels and recover more quickly from stressful events.

4. Happiness keeps those aches and pains away.

Positive emotions help mitigate your experience of pain meaning it’s easier to deal with arthritis pain or chronic pain.

5. Happiness can extend your life. Happier people live longer with a 35% lower mortality rate compared to their unhappy counterparts and reduces the problems associated with frailty in older people.

6. Happiness can reduce your risk of depression.

Maintaining a positive outlook on life, and feeling satisfied with what you have, reduces your risk of mental illness. Elevate your happiness with small positive practices. There’s no prescription as to what works the best. This is where your experience of what has worked makes the difference. Here are some examples:

1. Show an attitude of gratitude.

Showing your appreciation to a person is a shared gift. Reconnect to positive memories of places, people and events and express your gratitude through journaling, a letter, or silent mental thanks to boost hope and optimism.

2. Do random acts of kindness

Focusing your attention out and helping when you perceive the need, not in the expectation of reward but because you care, makes you happier, more generous, and prosocial. It does the same for the recipient. Every gesture and act matters.

3. Hang out in good company.

As social beings we thrive in the company of those we like, who see and believe like us too. Togetherness elevates a sense of belonging, a fundamental human trait as important as having access to food and shelter.