Note: This is a guest post by Stu from Improved Lives.

In the last few years the psychological study of happiness has experienced amazing growth. Happiness, once a subject that barely got any attention from researchers, has become a topic that makes the news over and over again and is the subject of many new and fascinating personal growth books.

I believe that one of the most fascinating and important things to come out of all this new and exciting research on happiness is the fact that our level of Happiness is the result of three different things:

Daily Happiness

    * 50% of our Happiness comes from our genetics - This one is fairly self-explanatory. Some of us are simply pre-programmed to be happier than others.

    * 10% of our Happiness comes from our circumstances - Our circumstances are what I like to call our ‘census info’. Your age, how much money you make, which country you live in, your job, your neighborhood, your education, whether you’re religious or not, these are your circumstances.
    * 40% of our Happiness comes from our intentional activities - Our intentional activities are the things we do day to day. A tasty meal for dinner could be an intentional activity, and so could a nice relaxing walk in the park.

These are the things that determine how happy (or how unhappy) we are.

Looking at that list though, the only thing that is easy to change is the intentional activities. It is simply impossible to change our genetics, and changing our circumstances is difficult and probably not worth the effort since it only accounts for 10% of our Happiness.

Clearly, to change our Happiness levels we need to focus not on the future but on what is happening right now.
How to Squeeze More Happiness Out of Intentional Activities

In an extremely interesting study (Is it possible to become happier? (And if so, how?) by Sheldon, K. M., & Lyubomirsky, S) of how intentional activities can be tweaked for maximum happiness levels, it was found that to achieve those maximum Happiness levels four things should be done:

   1. Be persistent - It was found that Happiness, like all good things in life, is not easy to achieve. Happiness takes work. You should remember, however, that if you do activities that fit well with your interests and your personality they will seem less like work and more like play.

   2. Know you can become happier - The researchers in this study found that “if people do not want to become happier, do not believe it is possible, or are not willing to invest the energy, then their Happiness level is unlikely to change.”

   3. Be spontaneous - In psychology there is a phenomenon known as hedonic adaptation. It means that the amount of Happiness you can extract from an activity gradually diminishes. To forestall this, try not to make the activities you do regularized. Instead, do them as you feel like it, and do it all at once; gorge on the activities that make you happy, don’t hold back!

   4. Embrace variety - Another essential way to fight hedonic adaptation is to make your activities new and novel by changing things about them such as where, when, and with who you do these activities. Be on the look out as well for other kinds of variation you can add.

So if you want to get the most Happiness out of the activities you do in your day to day life apply these four rules to them and you will be well on your way. Keep in mind though that these are just rules to govern the activities that you do. It’s up to you to find the day to day activities that make you happy, and there are no shortcuts to do that, you simply have to try them. The more things you go out and try, the more Happiness-raising activities you will have to apply these rules to.