People will spend most of their lives looking and waiting for happiness. We convince ourselves that the right career, the right life choices, and the right relationships will open the gates to happiness. Most people are misled, and they do not know what actually will bring them real happiness until they experience it first-hand. Happiness does not just happen with no work; you have to work towards it. It is something that has to be pursued on a constant level throughout our lives. After reading the articles on happiness, choices in life, and experienced well-being I have come to realize a few significant points that could point towards being happier and coming closer to actual happiness. Happiness can reached in a number of ways, and there are many steps that people can take to increase happiness in their own lives regardless of their background or the situations they find themselves in. In the first article we read named “The Smiling Professor”, Claudia Dreifus is interviewing a psychologist named Dan Gilbert. Dan Gilbert has spent his career studying the nature of human happiness. To many people Dan Gilbert is known as “Professor Happiness”. Throughout this interview Gilbert tends to refer to happiness as something that will happen to our future selves. When asked how predicting our feelings of future events could relate to understanding happiness Gilbert states “Because if we can’t predict how we’d react in the future, we can’t set realistic goals for ourselves or figure out how to reach to them”. Gilbert has provided one way we can attempt to reach happiness in the form of setting goals for ourselves. When setting goals for ourselves, we should make it realistic goals that we can achieve. Then with the achievement of those goals it will brings us happiness. Personal goals can be related to practically anything in our lives that is important to us, and most happy people will admit that they have realistic goals for a number of areas in their lives. Creating realistic goals in our lives gives our lives direction, and returns a sense of happiness in the form of achievement. In my personal life, I set short-term goals, long-term goals, and even daily goals for myself in a number of areas. A long-term goal that I have is to become a Physical Therapist. A short-term goal that I am working to accomplish is a trip to Disneyland for my son’s fifth birthday. A daily goal I have made is to always prepare my lunch every night for the following work day. The achievement of each of these goals I have set brings me happiness. If you are constantly acting towards completing realistic goals, you will reach them, and you will feel this sense of happiness once you have. In Daniel Kahneman’s writings of Thinking, Fast and Slow he describes how his studies of happiness directly relate to a person’s “measure of well-being” in their own life. Kahneman’s research on women refers to happiness as a positive state of mind, and positive emotional moments in the day. He writes “An individual’s mood at any moment depends on her temperament and overall happiness, but emotional well-being also fluctuates considerably over the day and the week” (Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, pg. 394). Unlike Gilbert’s research that portrays happiness as a future occurrence, Kahneman likes to explain happiness as a temporary state of being for moments happening throughout your day or week. He describes that while analyzing more substantial samples of women in different countries he has confirmed that situational factors, physical health, and social contact all play an importance in well-being and happiness. Social contact plays a major role in determining happiness in our lives. In this day of age, we are obsessed with staying connected at all times with friends, and family. Social media is great proof of this as it is at the highest usage in its lifetime. People feel that socializing and connecting gives them that temporary feeling of happiness and Kahneman alludes to that very idea in his studies. He expresses the idea as only a slight stretch to say that happiness is the experience of socializing with people who love you and who you love back. There is near nothing that is more significant to our overall happiness and well-being than our constant interactions with the people that we care about. Another article that provides a great approach in reaching happiness is from Barry Schwartz The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. From Schwartz studies suggests another way to reach happiness is to enjoy the moments we find happiness in, no matter how big or how small they may seem. In the Chapter “Why Decisions Disappoint: The problem of Adaptation” Schwartz describes our ability as humans to adapt to all things, and even adapt to the things that bring us happiness. In this chapter, Schwartz describes how our ability to adapt negates our ability to remain always happy. He describes in many examples how after we make a decision we become less happy about it due to thinking about what we have lost as a result of our decision. One example he provides is “After much anguish, you might decide to buy a Lexus, and you try to put all the attractions of other makes out of your mind. But once you’re driving your new car, the experience falls just a little bit flat”. He describes the feeling of happiness as an initial spike in satisfaction that diminishes as time passes, and that eventually brings you back to your pre-decision levels of satisfaction. On the other hand, if we do enjoy every moment that comes from that initial spike in happiness we will be happier. I think in my life, I observe this spike in happiness constantly through my four year old son and his new toys. As children we are convinced that nothing would make us happier than a new toy, and we spend every moment pleading with our parents to have that toy we desperately want. Whenever we drove past a toy store we would begin to tell our parents how happy it would make us to have that new toy. Then once we get that toy we are thrilled, and receive this spike in happiness. After that initial spike is gone the toy spends the rest of the time in the closet or under our beds as we being to beg our parents for a new toy. In the case you that decide to enjoy every minute within that initial spike that brings you happiness, you can be that much closer to holding on to real happiness. Happiness can come in various ways, and there are numerous steps that people can take to increase that feeling of happiness in their own lives. The journey to finding happiness is viewed as an essential part of living, and that is why people will spend most of their lives searching for it. We persuade ourselves that the right profession, the right connections, and the right life decisions will open the doors to happiness. However, through my readings of these psychologists’ studies performed on happiness I trust we can reach happiness in our lives constantly. The keys to winning your constant chase for real happiness is to set goals for your future selves, be with the people who love and cherish you, and appreciate the moments we discover happiness no matter the length or size of the moment. I think that we all need to reconsider the way we pursue happiness in our lives, and start to appreciate the moments in our lives that truly matter.