Happiness – they say it’s genetic!

Our happiness or 50% of it they say, depends on our genes. That’s the conclusion that psychologists at the University of Edinburgh came to in working with researchers at Queensland Institute for Medical Research in Australia.

They studied identical twins and realised that their happiness was 50% correlated, even when they grew up in different locations.

But even so, what of the other 50%? How can we influence it?

It’s acknowledged that levels of happiness can affect self confidence and self esteem, so it’s obviously worthwhile trying to.

Other researchers, mainly in the United States, have cited everything from martial arts to religion as affecting our “happiness quotient”.

Some have tried to suggest that money equals happiness. Remember the Michael Caine character – Frank Bryant in the 1983 film, Educating Rita saying, “What’s the good of happiness, you can’t buy money with it”.

There’s no shortage of suggestions for increasing our “happiness quotient”, as the search engines will confirm. Although, it seems that the more there are,we are spoilt for choice and in the confusion don't adopt any at all.

So how would it be if there was one technique we might take on board, just one, that we could apply to increase our happiness level?

Well, we think we’ve found one, and we're in the process of testing it with a group of volunteers.

Register for a free copy of our

report

Although, regrettably it's too late for you to participate yourself, we would be delighted to send you a copy of the project report when it's published in June.Just enter your details below and please be assured we won’t share these with anyone else for any reason.

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