Well, you want to put effort into creating time and space for journaling. Give it attention, or you will never find the perfect time and space to do it. Of course, what it looks like will depend on the individual—a happy life for one person may be another’s nightmare! The participants in the mental training program and in the related research were recruited from the Institute Lama Tzong Khapa (Pomaia, Italy) in a 9-month longitudinal study (seven modules and two retreats) on the effects of a program called The Art of Happiness (see Supplementary Material for full details of the program). Twenty-nine participants followed the entire program (there were nine dropouts after the first module). Their mean age was 52.86 years (range = 39–66; SD = 7.61); 72% were female. Participants described themselves as Caucasian, reaching a medium-high scholarly level with 59% of the participants holding an academic degree and 41% holding a high school degree. The participants were not randomly selected, as they were volunteers in the program. Most of them had no serious prior experience of meditation, only basic experience consisting of personal readings or watching video courses on the web, which overall we considered of no impact to the study. The only exclusion criteria were absence of a history of psychiatric or neurological disease, and not being currently on psychoactive medications. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Sapienza University of Rome, and all participants gave written informed consent. The participants did not receive any compensation for participation in the study. Design The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Nicola De Pisapia, upon reasonable request. Ethics Statement

Your happiness journal should be a collection of everything that makes your heart jump with joy. This will make you aware of your happiness and you’ll consciously do more things that make you happy. Participants were guided in the theory and practice of various contemplative exercises throughout the course pertaining to all the different themes. Recorded versions of all the various meditation exercises were made available to participants, enabling them to repeat these practices at home at their own pace. You can start your happiness journal any way you like and feel comfortable with. You might like to go out or search online for a dedicated notebook. You might like to start out on a Word document. You might like a mixture of both. I wish I were more consistent with affirmations; they do wonders for me. If you get affected by other people’s words, you must try affirmations because you will be equally affected by them. But this time, that would be a good thing.Realistically, just going to sleep early enough is a brilliant act of self-care many of us skip, but we could also do better. of authors who answered a survey reported that they would definitely publish or probably publish in the journal again Numerous studies have shown that most people with higher income levels have higher subjective well-being, although their happiness increases to a lesser extent [ 58]. However, other studies indicate that the impact of the income gap on happiness is unclear [ 23]. It could be the case that people with lower incomes have greater future prospects, which would encourage them to work much harder to improve their happiness [ 62]. Despite these methodological limitations and still unexplored directions of research, the results described here suggest that The Art of Happiness may be a promising program for fostering well-being in individuals, improving mental health and psychological functioning. Longitudinal integrated contemplative programs with retreats offer a unique opportunity for the intensive development of the inner attitudes related to the capacity to be happy, reducing mental health symptoms and improving a more stable eudemonic well-being in healthy adults. Data Availability Statement

When citizens assess neighbourhood-related problems, they tend to significantly associate them with their satisfaction with living in that particular area, although such problems are not significant when it comes to their assessment of the city [ 1]. However, other studies have found that a positive attitude towards other citizens is positively correlated with the satisfaction of those who live in the city in question [ 63], and a positive social attitude towards neighbours is positively related to satisfaction with the neighbourhood [ 64] and with the local area [ 65]. Moreover, other studies have found that households with children differ from childless households in their perception of satisfaction with the neighbourhood or local area [ 65]. When we are happy in our most important relationships (usually our spouse or significant other, our children and/or our parents, other close family members, and our closest friends), we tend to be happier. As you can probably assume from the list above, there is a strong relationship between mental health and happiness! When happy people are healthier, have better relationships, make friends more easily, and find more success in life, it’s easy to see why happiness and mental health are related. We have some control over how our relationships go, so that leads us to an interesting and important question: can we increase our own happiness? Can individuals learn how to be happy?

Results

Happiness is a state, not a trait; in other words, it isn’t a long-lasting, permanent feature or personality trait, but a more fleeting, changeable state. Call me selfish, but I wake up at 5 a.m. on most mornings with the only reason to attend to my needs first before attending to someone else’s needs. I simply must (yes, that’s the right word) take some alone-time in the early hours of the day, do what I feel is self-nourishing and welcome the day feeling content. Although they generally all agree on what happiness feels like—being satisfied with life, in a good mood, feeling positive emotions, feeling enjoyment, etc.—researchers have found it difficult to agree on the scope of happiness.

Shafiq, S., Naz, R. A., Ansar, M., Nasrulla, T., Bushra, M., & Imam, S. (2015). Happiness as related to mental health among university students. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 5, 124-132.Expecting to do a lot of deep thinking was positively related to meaningfulness, but negatively with happiness;

The program provided lectures and discussions, readings, and expert videos introducing the material pertinent to each module's topic. Participants engaged with the material through listening, reading, discussing, and questioning. Participants were provided with additional learning opportunities to investigate each topic more deeply, critically, and personally, through the media of meditation, journaling, application to daily life, exercises at home, and contemplative group work with other participants in dyads and triads. Participants were then encouraged to reflect repeatedly on their insights and on their experiences, both successful and not, to apply their newly acquired understandings to their lives, by incorporating a daily reflection practice into their life schedule. The two program retreats also provided intensive contemplative experiences and activities, both individual and in dialogue with others. That’s better! So, happiness is the state of feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. From this definition, we can glean a few important points about happiness: You might be wondering why happiness is considered such an important aspect of life, as there are many components of a meaningful life. Eudaimonic happiness/well-being conceptualizes happiness as the result of the pursuit and attainment of life purpose, meaning, challenge, and personal growth; happiness is based on reaching one’s full potential and operating at full functioning (AIPC, 2011). Happiness and meaning have an even more distinct line between the two. Rarely are happiness and meaning confused or used interchangeably, and for good reason—they describe two very different experiences.In terms of the content of this program, as mentioned above, the material presented and explored has been drawn on the one hand from the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism and Western contemplative traditions, and current scientific research found in neuropsychology on the other hand. On the scientific side, topics included the effects of mental training and meditation, the psychology and neuroscience of well-being and happiness, neuroplasticity, mind–brain–body interactions, different areas of contemplative sciences, the placebo effects, the brain circuits of attention and mind wandering, stress and anxiety, pain and pleasure, positive and negative emotions, desire and addiction, the sense of self, empathy, and compassion (for a full list of the scientific topics, see Supplementary Material).