MORE ABOUT HAPPINESS (continued)

3. Diversify your good deeds.
Being kind and helpful makes most everyone feel good.

     But just as the novelty of a new car or electronic gadget inevitably wears off, so does the warm glow that comes from doing the same good deed over and over. People who performed various small acts of kindness every week for 10 weeks - shoveling a friends sidewalk, giving pets a special treat, sending a birthday card - grew happier with each passing week, and the benefit lasted for at least another month, found a study by University of California, Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD, and colleagues. 
     In contrast, people who performed the same kind act repeatedly become less happy after a few weeks, then reverted to their prior level of contentment.
Try this:  Do several good deeds in 1 day; researchers say your happiness boost with be greater than if you spread them out evenly over time. 

4.  Hope for small changes, not big ones.
     Research shows that even major life events, such as winning the lottery, hardly nudge people's overall sense of satisfaction

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve your well being. Recent research finds that the little things we do regularly, like exercising or attending religious services, can have a major impact on our happiness. In one study, Yale University psychologist Daniel Mochom, PhD, and colleagues at Harvard and Duke universities discovered that people leaving religious services felt slightly happier than those going in--and the more regularly people attended religious services, the happier they felt overall. The same is true for exercise--people not only feel happier after going to the gym or to a yoga class, but they also get a bigger boost the more often they go. 

5.  Invest in experiences, not stuff..
      Doing things, not buying things, gives you the most bang for your buck.

     Why? For one thing, says University of Colorado at Boulder social psychologist Leaf Van Boven, PhD, it's easier to reinterpret experiences than to retool material purchases. If your new smart phone disappoints, you have to either shell out for a better one or lower your expectations. But if it rains on a hiking trip, you can recast the drenching experience in your memory as a character-building challenge.
     Also, sharing life experiences with others helps satisfy our need for social connection--another known mood booster. 

6.  Shift your focus.
     From work to relationships to health, we have choices about where to concentrate our attention.

     When a snowstorm keeps you from getting to the office, do you choose to focus on how behind you'll be by tomorrow or on the 8-hour gift of time you've just been given? When you paint your daughter's bedroom, do you fret about how much you hate the drudgery or think ahead to how pleased she'll be when she comes home for Christmas break? The answer to such questions has a big influence on your well-being, writes Winifred Gallagher, author of Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. 
     Studies show that focusing on positive emotions--curiosity instead of fear, compassion instead of anger--leads to broader, more flexible thinking, more playfulness and exploration, and richer social connections. Positive emotions also temper negative feelings' corrosive physiological effects--especially their impact on the cardiovascular system. It's not surprising, then, that people who habitually adopt an optimistic focus have fewer health problems and live longer than their more pessimistic counterparts.

7.  Let your mind wander.
      The flipside of focus is daydreaming.

Although we spend up to one-third of our waking lives in this luscious state of "undirected thought," we often dismiss daydreaming as a sign of procrastination and laziness. But recent brain-imaging research shows that when you're daydreaming, your brain is actually working pretty hard. In one recent study, University of British Columbia psychologist Kalina Christoff, PhD and colleagues found that people who allowed their minds to wander while doing simple tasks tapped into not only their "executive" brain network (source of logical thinking and problem solving) but also their "default network"that is the wellspring for creative thought and relaxed, introspective thinking.
     To rev brainpower, Christoff suggests alternating deliberate, focused thinking with some spontaneous mind-wandering. Another strategy is to occasionally set aside time for uninterrupted daydreaming, like a stolen hour for a stroll in the park.