The good news: You can train your mind to think about what's going right (as opposed to what's going wrong) and in so doing, create a lasting habit that will boost your positive emotions.

Thank goodness we've been able to laugh, because the perspective of humor has given us cheerfulness in the face of challenge, has made us more flexible and resilient, and it's given us the courage to face life and make necessary changes.

If you consistently do things in your life that help you and others achieve goals, then your journey is a happy one. And over time, you will find that you rise to a position of power within your network. And that makes you happy as well.

It does take effort to smile, to be engaged in your world, in your surroundings, but once you smile, the rewards are endless. Consider the first smile of your day your first and most important workout. Your heart and your mind will be the better for it.

This movie is for you. For me. For everyone. It brings full circle a wealth of scientific, empirical, and national research on happiness and delivers it in a documentary-type format so mesmerizing you'll be recommending it to friends and family before you get halfway through.

We've all done it: putting our happiness on hold until some magical future date when the big thing that we want happens and we'll give ourselves permission to be happy. Here's the problem with that kind of thinking.

Happiness is a choice, even in the midst of a chronic illness. By taking small steps, large goals can be accomplished, enhancing the outlook and overall well-being of those living with or affected by a life-altering disease.

It's been seven years since we began this journey and, slowly, we made progress to attain the unattainable. I'm incredibly grateful because simplifying my life has given me the flexibility to make choices I hadn't considered.

An interesting aspect of these kinds of happiness is that they seem to be related to people's focus on time. Why does this matter? These researchers find that the kind of happiness you are experiencing affects the types of products you are interested in buying.

The rewards associated with longer commutes -- a bigger house, a higher salary or better schools -- don't fully compensate for the sacrifices we end up making by working so far from home.

Harvard researchers have found that what matters more is not what people are doing but rather the degree of attention that they are bringing to what they are doing.

Understandings of happiness differ by worldview and faith traditions, cultural contexts and individual characteristics.

A few days ago I came across a fantastic article by Joshua Wolf Shenk in the Atlantic Monthly on the Grant Study, the longest longitudinal study of happiness ever conducted.