Name: What is happiness?
Uploaded: 2014-06-16T06:08:50.000Z
Duration: 5 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Careering on your front wheel down something.

I get a buzz, I get a really warm feeling inside

Gerund

Jumping around and just constantly laughing.

...bouncing your hand off a tree and somehow not ending up on the floor.

You take a mental photograph and it kind of embeds into your memory.

When everything comes together it just feels easy and   you just feel like you can fly almost.

Happiness is something that everybody is looking for, and   it makes sense because happiness feels good.

But happy people are really good for society because  they tend to live longer, they are more successful,

they outperform people who are unhappy,  and they tend to be nicer, more altruistic people.

In fact, happy children outperform their peers on all levels.

Our work is looking at the scientific study of happiness,   trying to understand what causes people to be happy.

Meeting a lot of people that are from a lot of different places.

Happiness can be measured quite easily. It's really a matter   of asking people a simple question like,

how happy have you been feeling today, or in the last week,

and asking them to rate on a scale perhaps   from nought to 7 or nought to 10.

I would say I'm quite high. I'd say I'm an 8 or a 9.

There are obviously different types of happiness, and   really there are two main categories,

one being an instant form of happiness  which tends to be quite unhealthy,

and the other being healthy long-term happiness.

Instant happiness tends to come from things like drugs, alcohol,

doing things that involve risk and potentially are not that   good for us. They give us the highs

... but they tend to have really big lows attached.

The second type of happiness is long-term happiness, and that's   really what everybody should be striving to achieve.

And the way you achieve that is to have great relationships,   make sure that you know what you're good at,

and make sure that you work at that  because it reinforces your self worth.

For a long time it was thought that your level   of happiness was fixed, and that more or less...

whatever happened to you in life, good or bad, you'd   always return to about the same level of happiness.

But actually that's not the case and there are things   that can make a lasting improvement to your happiness.

Resilient people are happier people, and by the term   'resilient' I'm talking about somebody's ability

to have things go wrong in their life,   and pick themselves up and carry on.

The art of being resilient means that it's not that you   don't fail, but that when you fail that's okay,

because you'll have learnt something, and the next   time you'll ensure that doesn't happen again.

Happiness is more to do with the things you   do rather than the things you have.

Yeah, why didn't I say playing guitar, when I'm the happiest,   that was foolish, um, sitting by the river... God!

The brilliant thing about resilience is you don't have   to know it as a child, for example.

You can learn it. You can pick up the tips and tricks.

Connect with people. In other words try to spend   time with people you like, socialising, having fun.

The last festival I played was the V Festival last summer.

So all of my best friends were there, all my family were there,

and I'd been the year before as like a camper just to watch it,   and I'd no idea that the next year I'd be performing there.

Keeping learning is really important for keeping interested in life.

When I get on a climbing wall and the first time I   go on it, it feels impossible, but by practising it,

it just feels easy, and you just feel like you can fly almost.

Sometimes it's really important just to stop, and take   notice of how we feel right now.

One of the best, er, occasions I find for   meditation is going on the London Underground...

... and you have this moving background noise   that wipes out all the distraction,

and you are there with free time with nothing else to   do, and that's when I find it very, very effective.

Being in control of your life, realising  that you can make decisions...

...that you're in command and that you can  take responsibility for your own happiness.

I have been doing Kung Fu and Russian Marshall Arts for 5 years.

I started from basic beginners and learnt it up to   teaching standard. I'm the only female in my class.

I'm a stick. I'm really weak. But like now I've   really built myself up and I'm proud of myself.

Giving is actually a great way of improving your own happiness.

Being nice to somebody, being kind to them, makes you feel great

Once a tattoo's finished and I step back from it...

...I relish the accomplishment, but seeing their expression...

...I can actually tell if someone's very happy with the end result.

Little by little, you know, it's little pieces of art walking around   that have interaction with other people that bring joy to them.

The thing about happiness is, yeah, it might sound like it's   hard work, but actually the benefits of that work...

...are so joyful that it's worth every bit of that investment.

Spend some time thinking about what you really enjoy doing   and who you really enjoy doing it with,

and then just make plans to keep doing it   and doing it as often as you can.

Nobody can be happy all the time, and that is a really good thing   because the thing about being a human is the range of emotions.

And when you feel happy, you know it because   it's different from feeling okay, or feeling sad.

The reality is that when we get that rush  it's a real joyful experience,

but at the same time we should always aim   for just a consistent feeling of being okay...

...because that's a really good place for anybody to be.   And when you get the happiness rush, brilliant.

But the rest of the time, it's cool to just be... right here.