{"id":11767,"date":"2026-08-31T09:37:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:37:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=11767"},"modified":"2026-08-31T09:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T09:37:14","slug":"happiness-researcher-shares-4-big-habits-the-worlds-happiest-people-engage-in-daily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/?p=11767","title":{"rendered":"Happiness researcher shares 4 \u2018big habits\u2019 the world\u2019s happiest people engage in daily"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. Brooks calls it \u201cthe happiness pension plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pursuit of happiness is seen as such an inseparable element of being human that the founders of the United States put it in the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence. Everyone wants to be happy. And yet, so many find happiness elusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harvard University social scientist Dr. Arthur C. Brooks has made human happiness (and the pursuit of it) the central focus of his research. In his studies, he has identified four habits that the happiest people practice each day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Defining happiness
How are \u201cthe happiest people in the world\u201d measured? Brooks explained the happiest people are those who score highest on what he calls the \u201cmacronutrients of happiness\u201d: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoyment doesn\u2019t mean pleasure, Brooks said at a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum in 2024. \u201cThe pursuit of pleasure is a great way to ruin your life,\u201d he said. \u201cEnjoyment takes the source of pleasure and adds two things: people and memory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Satisfaction involves both achievement and detachment. We are satisfied when we successfully achieve a goal. We are also satisfied when we want less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meaning is the most important of these macronutrients. \u201cMeaning is about coherence\u2014why do things happen the way they do? Purpose. What is my direction and goals? And significance. Why does it matter that I am alive?\u201d Brooks said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People who score highest in these areas tend to engage in four \u201cbig habits\u201d every day. Brooks collectively refers to these habits as a \u201chappiness pension plan\u201d that people make deposits into:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happiness Habit #1: Transcendence
\u201cThey\u2019re paying attention every day to their faith or philosophical life, which is religious or not, but is transcending themselves and standing in awe of something bigger,\u201d Brooks shared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brooks talks about transcendence as a \u201cvertical\u201d practice, \u201cwhere you\u2019re looking for something that\u2019s divine, something that\u2019s bigger than you.\u201d But that could look like a lot of different things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe that means studying the Stoics and living according to their principles, even as an atheist,\u201d Brooks explained to Mark Manson. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s walking in nature for an hour before dawn without devices. Maybe that\u2019s studying the fugues of Bach. Maybe that\u2019s studying the Vipassana meditation practice with seriousness. And maybe that\u2019s going to mass every day. Transcending yourself is one of the great secrets to happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happiness Habit #2: Family
\u201cThey\u2019re taking their family life seriously,\u201d said Brooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brooks told How To Academy:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll families are imperfect and everybody cares about their families. Anybody who says \u2018I don\u2019t care about my family\u2019 they\u2019re just lying. It\u2019s very, very important that we understand that the strange and magical nature of family relationships we have, they\u2019re some of the most intense love relationships that we have. And we didn\u2019t choose them. It doesn\u2019t even make sense. It\u2019s almost a mystical thing, that people have those people who can drive you absolutely around the bend, make you completely crazy, and you didn\u2019t even choose a relationship? And you feel great sorrow where there\u2019s schism? This is something that we need to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brooks said that stress in families due to differences in opinions or values is \u201cinevitable.\u201d He added that we need to understand the imperfect nature of families and that we all need to work at making those relationships better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happiness Habit #3: Friendships
Happy people also take their friendships seriously, Brooks said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s super hard for people in business,\u201d he added, \u201cespecially the higher you go in management, the fewer real friends you have and the more \u2018deal friends\u2019 that you have. And deal friends don\u2019t count.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brooks told the Mighty Pursuit podcast that friendship exists at three levels. Deal friends are the lowest level of friendship, where the relationship is transactional. Next are friendships based on beauty or admiration. The friend has something magnetic about them that attracts you and makes you enjoy being around them. Finally, there are friendships of virtue, the deepest and truest form of friendship. Brooks called this level of friendship \u201cuseless\u201d because it\u2019s not about either person gaining anything, but rather about truly knowing one another on a deep level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Happiness Habit #4: Work that serves others
\u201cLast but not least is dedicating your work to earning your success and serving other people,\u201d Brooks said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJoy comes from work under two circumstances that have nothing to do with money and power and position and prestige, nothing, nothing, nothing,\u201d Brooks shared in a video. \u201cIt has to do with earning your success, which means that you\u2019re creating value with your life, you believe that you\u2019re needed. And that you\u2019re serving other people. You\u2019re doing something that\u2019s actually good for other people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s faith, family, friends, and work that serves,\u201d Brooks said. \u201cThose are the big four.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Brooks calls it \u201cthe happiness pension plan.\u201d The pursuit of happiness is seen as such an inseparable element of being human that the founders<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11768,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/650758837_1398984788929175_6459691366081926516_n-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11769,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11767\/revisions\/11769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/humorsidehub.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}