How to Be Happy: 15 Ways to Make a Change

If you resolved to be happier this year, the good news is that a huge part of your overall satisfaction with life is entirely within your control, even if very little else is. Dr. Steven Toepfer, an associate professor in the Human Development and Family Studies department of Kent State University, says one big way you can improve your overall happiness and well-being is to sit down to write a philosophy of life. That's a set of guiding principles you can lean on when life gets hard. This is different for every person, and may take you 10 minutes or 10 days to write. Focus on what's important to you — family, community, education, passions that bring you joy — and not on changing your life circumstances, like your job, your relationship or your city. This is a challenging but worthwhile exercise, Dr. Toepfer says. Think of some things that are important to you, and then unpack them. “My interest in education is a lot about helping people find meaning, and that’s what a philosophy of life should get you to: meaning,” he says.

Dr. Toepfer has students in his Building Family Strengths class write their own philosophies of life early on in the course. The first time around, most people fall into the same trap, saying that their life philosophy is to be happy. But you can’t just pursue that feeling, he says — you need something bigger. "You probably shouldn’t pursue happiness, honestly,” he says. You want your life to be rooted in values that bring you joy and satisfaction, not just in the pursuit of a feeling. “When someone has a real philosophy of life,” Dr. Toepfer says, “the stressful things outside of that — money, materialism, which can be devastating in a person’s life — those things fall away when they’re troubling and come knocking on your door because you have a philosophy of life that’s more important.”

Instead of actively trying to chase happiness, Dr. Toepfer suggests finding passions and hobbies. “You should pursue things you love, things you like,” he says, and then the happiness will come. If you don’t have much disposable income right now to spend on hobbies, you can try singing or dancing at home, running, taking long walks in your neighborhood, writing short stories or journaling about your life or sketching or drawing. Start small and keep it up if it makes you happy, even if you think you’re not particularly good at it — just because some people sell their crafts on Etsy doesn’t mean you have to create with selling in mind, too.

The benefits of houseplants are almost too good to believe: Aside from being pretty and cleaning the air we breathe, studies have shown they may actually boost our concentration, productivity and mood, and decrease stress. Physically working with them, like transplanting them into different pots, is soothing to people and can decrease their stress, according to a 2015 National Institutes of Health study which found interaction with houseplants reduced psychological and physiological stress in young adults. If you’re not an experienced houseplant parent, start here with some advice from the experts at the Victorian Atlanta plant shop, then head to your local garden store.

This is a tough one, because it can be hard to take the risk to be more open with even the most trusted people in your lives. But letting your guard down to share more openly and honestly with the important people in your lives can bring you closer together and improve your relationships, Dr. Toepfer says.

Speaking of vulnerable conversations, Dr. Toepfer says that having a marriage contract can dramatically improve spousal relationships. And he’s not talking about the vows you say on your wedding day, or the legal documents you sign when you get married. Rather, a marriage contract is a document you write with your spouse that lays out what you expect from each other — say, whether or not you want to have children, what your shared values are, what you want out of the marriage and how much time and affection you expect from each other. This should be a living document that you revisit once a year. For couples who write them — ideally before getting married, but it’s never too late to have these kinds of conversations — divorce is exceptionally rare, Dr. Toepfer says.

Dr. Toepfer has conducted studies in which participants were found to have increased feelings of happiness and life satisfaction after writing letters of gratitude. But these aren’t just regular old thank you notes, he says. Unlike a card you send to say thanks for a gift, a letter of gratitude is more about the non-material things someone brings to your life. You could write to thank a friend for moral support, for example, or an aunt for teaching you how to drive or garden or bake the family’s secret cookie recipe. One caveat, though: there is a limit to how much you can improve your happiness by being grateful, Dr. Toepfer says. Writing a letter every single day might be great for you at first, but then eventually you may start to see it as a chore, or feel like you've run out of things to be grateful for, and it can have an adverse effect. So, change it up. Find different ways to express gratitude, and don't go overboard. You don't need to keep a gratitude journal every day, but maybe try doing so once a week, Dr. Toepfer suggests. (Hint: When in doubt, trust yourself. There's no exact formula for any of this.)

Even if you don’t have much space for a garden, growing a few plants can increase your happiness and boost your mood about as much as doing some kinds of exercise. People who garden, on average, experience higher levels of net well-being than people who don't, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning. In the study, people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area were found to experience roughly the same amout of happiness and meaningfulness from gardening as they did from biking, walking and eating out. Women, people who self-identified as being lower-income and people who garden vegetables (as opposed to ornamental plants) were found to gain significantly more from the experienece.

Your local plant and home improvement stores likely have a wide variety of starter plants and seeds suitable for the climate you live in, or could help you figure out how to start a mini indoor or outdoor greenhouse if you have the space (and time) for it.

Moving is good for our bodies, both physically and mentally. When you exercise, your body increases its serotonin production, which is responsible for regulating your mood, sleep and appetite. Even walking for just 10 minutes a day can help you feel better. People over the age of 60 who walk for at least 45 minutes a day were found to be "mentally sharper" after consistently partaking in a walking program, a 1999 study by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And in 2014, a study from Stanford University published by the American Psychological Association found that people's creative ideation increased significantly after walking. Try leaving your phone at home when you go for a walk around the neighborhood, to give yourself a brain break from screens and notifications, and instead tune in to the sounds of the world around you.

Aside from being a fun escape from reality, reading has been proven to reduce stress and anxiety. A 2009 study from the University of Sussex found that reading can reduce stress by about 68%, and just a few minutes of it can lower your heart rate and blood pressure, calming you down. E-books make it easier than ever to read new titles without leaving the house to browse, too — most libraries allow you to borrow Kindle and e-pub books right from their website. If your local library doesn’t have access to e-books or doesn’t offer many titles, try seeing if you can get a library card from a neighboring district. Each library has different rules, but some are more lenient about borrowing privileges.

Spending time in nature has been proven time and time again to have a direct impact on our long-term health and well-being, as well as having an immediate impact on improving our moods when we’re stressed. Depending on where you live, you may not have easy access to backcountry areas, but there’s no “right” way to spend time outdoors. A Stanford study published in 2015 found that people ruminated less about negative thoughts while going for walks or hikes in natural settings as opposed to heavily trafficked urban areas. If you don't have easy access to parks, trails or green spaces and you want a sight a bit more exciting than the houses you see every day, consider just getting up early to see how the sunrise tints your neighborhood different colors, or peek out the windows at sunset. Especially on short winter days when the sun sets before work ends, it can be easy to miss the sunset even when it paints your neighborhood beautiful colors. Just Google sunset and your city to get a sundown time for the day and set an alarm to remind you to look out the window as it draws close.

You’re not imagining it: That pile of clutter on your kitchen table could actually be causing you stress. A University of California-Los Angeles study published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin in 2010 analyzed people's moods and language when giving tours of their homes. The researchers found that women who described their homes as cluttered or unfinished experienced higher levels of stress and depression than women who described feeling comforted or restored by their homes. By investing time to tidy up your living area and get rid of things you don’t need, you may be able to make yourself more comfortable in your space, remove stressors (like feeling like you have unfinished tasks hanging over you) and improve your mood. Not sure where to start? Try spending just 10 or 15 minutes organizing a corner or desk drawer, or challenge yourself to find something to donate every day. Start small, getting rid of just one thing, then work up to letting go of more items.

If loneliness is a struggle for you, well, you’re not alone in that: even before the pandemic started, three in five adults reported feelings of loneliness during a survey of office employees conducted in 2019 by the healthcare company Cigna. People who reported heavy social media use were more likely to feel lonely. But that’s the tricky thing about the social distancing requirements we need to adhere to: When the internet is our only source of connection, we have to get creative. So, consider experimenting with short “voice memos” in lieu of text messages to friends and family, so you can hear each other’s voices and inflection rather than just short responses to quick questions. You can send them easily via iMessage, WhatsApp and other messaging platforms.

Screen time can have a dramatic impact on our mental health, especially if we’re using it to doomscroll through social media or read too much bad news. Dr. Toepfer says his family has experimented with "tech-free Tuesdays" and while his kids fought the idea at first, they eventually came around and now the whole family enjoys spending more quality time together. They replaced screens with board games and more time together outside. Try putting all your technology away one day a week, or even for a whole weekend, and instead spend quality time with your family — play board games, tell stories, do a craft or baking project together — or if you live alone, focus on yourself and various analog tasks that bring you joy. The mental break from all the constant notifications may help you sleep better, too.