Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Happiness Hypothesis calculates happiness and the sum of one’s setpoint, conditions and voluntary activities.

H = S + C + V

As an algorithm it sucks because it would also be true that C = H – S -V, which in English would be that the conditions of life equal happiness minus one’s genetic inheritance and minus one’s voluntary activities, which makes no sense at all. But this isn’t really about science, it’s about trying to discover, with some empirical validity, what makes people happy.

Briefly, S (setpoint) is the genetic inheritance you carry which largely sets the range of happiness you can experience normally. Some of us got a  high range and grow up as happy bubbly kinds of people. (Hate the fuckers.) Then there’s the people like me who got the lower ranges. We tend toward what I call realism and my bubbly friend calls pessimism. The other important thing about setpoint is that we adapt fairly quickly to new conditions and so keep our regular happiness level within our range. Say you win the lottery. Happy, happy you say. Well yes for a little bit and then you will adapt and if nothing else changes you’ll go back to being just as happy/unhappy as before. This adaption is a good thing because if you become damaged in some way and think your life is over, you’ll adapt and go back to being your previous happy self. And, realistically, becoming damaged by life is a lot more likely than winning the lottery so this adaption serves us well.

C (conditions of your life like sex, age, race, disability, IQ) are the aspects of your life you cannot change. But there are aspects you can effect. For example, these five areas directly impact happiness because we do not adapt to them like we do to things like general wealth (or disability, etc.) and so they continually impact our happiness for better or worse.

1. Noise either comforts or stresses us out. Silence is either scary or nurturing. But that occasional jackhammer your neighbour uses in his bedroom at 3AM? That’s going to decrease your happiness. Having a room to go for silence when necessary? That’s going to increase your happiness. Having control over noise is important to upping the value of C.
2. Stop and go traffic and commuting decreases the value of C. Highway driving under good conditions increases the value of C. Has to do with freedom and a sense of control as well as getting into the flow of movement I suspect.
3. Control over things is hugely important. If you have no control over anything in your life your happiness quotient sucks.
4. Shame is going to drop your H level down the toilet (our out-house hole). If I were you I’d stop doing that thing that makes you so ashamed or if it’s your face (butt, boobs, mind etc) then either fix it or find a way to be grateful that you have one at all.
5. Love is going to raise your H level. Not got a partner? Go get a friend. Have a good talk. Those hormones will get released just the same.

Voluntary activities are the things you choose to do on a daily basis. Apparently it is in this area that you can make the greatest impact on your happiness level. Here there are things like taking vacations, exercising, meditation, walking, helping others, learning something new. Because you choose these activities—and therefore exert control in your life—they are perhaps your easiest way of increasing your happiness level.

A word about work: work is critical to our general happiness because we spend so much of our lives doing it and because the value of creation and contribution is built into being human. Like love it is a condition of life that one can change but can become a constant over a long period of time. If your work sucks, your happiness sucks. We need to feel effective in the world so the idea is to find out what your particular strengths are and find work that uses those strengths daily. Want tests to measure your strengths? Go here.

On a more realistic note (given the need for things like food money and rent) if what you feel passionate about is poetry you’re in trouble because society doesn’t much value poetry and that is  important. In the final bit of Haidt’s book he looks at the idea of coherence. When all one’s components of self are working together you will cohere and be happy. One of those components is social value. So if you work in an industry which either you have lost any sense of its wider purpose or society doesn’t value your group’s perceived purpose your inner coherence is destabilized to the detriment of your happiness. So getting a job in a world that society values (and you do too) is a good way to work toward your own happiness.

But say you still want to do what you love, and poetry is all you really think about. The idea is to create a life-work coherence which enables what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” How to do that? To craft a job that meets Maslow’s basic needs, provides gratification and coherence? I’m investigating that now.

Anyway, enough. There are a huge number of positive psychology sites and books out there on happiness and how to go about increasing its presence in your life. Good hunting.