What is happiness? 

Leading behavioural psychologists tell us that it’s often a combination of factors. Firstly, an overall sense of wellbeing. Someone who feels in control of their health, is active, and conscious of what they need to do to stay healthy. Secondly, someone who not only experiences positive situations, but someone who recognises the positives and welcomes those feelings too; for example after an appraisal at work, not only focussing on the stuff to improve, but also recalling and telling others about the positives too. Lastly those who have plans, goals, a direction they are heading in, whether that be work or personal. 

Now of course you can be inactive, not very healthy or have any true direction and still be happy, but would having them make you even happier?

That said, what can we all do to improve our happiness and have more chances of experiencing the emotion more regularly? 

 Author: Dr. Adam Greenfield, Co-founder of WorkLifeWell |...

When we mention equations there are often a lot of raised eyebrows in the audience, however, occasionally an equation comes along that is helpful with our day-to-day life and worth taking note of:

DISAPPOINTMENT = EXPECTATIONS - REALITY

If you throw around a few variables we get an idea of how this equation works. Let’s presume that for most people the aim is to minimise disappointment. This is best achieved when we strive to minimise our expectations. If our expectations match our current reality then our disappointment score would be zero. Furthermore if our reality was actually a lot better than we were expecting then disappointment decreases its hold on our existence. The main time we get submerged in large amounts of disappointment is when we are expecting something to go one way but for some reason or another, we find that in reality, this didn’t happen.  

Now, this doesn’t mean that we should always expect the worst. It’s important to...