Americans have never struggled more with their happiness than they do today. In fact, they are more unhappy than they’ve been in 50 years. 

All of us know what it’s like to be happy or unhappy. But do we know what the main factors are behind our happiness or unhappiness? What exactly is happiness, and how can we best promote our own?

Happiness means feeling joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment; a happy person, to put it simply, has more positive than negative emotions.

But happiness is more than just a feeling. Psychologists use the term “subjective well-being” when describing happiness. That’s because being happy isn’t a temporary experience; it’s a way that we flourish as human beings, not just something that we feel from time to time. 

Our happiness is a form of well-being; it’s different from being healthy or being successful or doing well at work, but it is connected to all of these things. Having a nice car or living in a nice neighborhood won’t make us happy. But when we’re happy, we can enjoy all of these things while feeling good about ourselves.

So, what should we do to be happy? 

One of the most important steps we can take in promoting our own happiness is to stop chasing after external things. We may think that these things are what will make us happy, but the truth is that things can’t make us happy; instead, we have to embrace responsibility for our own happiness.

That means doing the work to discover our deeper passions, learn our feelings, identify what we value most and grow in who we are. All of these things will help us to flourish and achieve our subjective well-being. 

On a day-to-day basis, promoting your own happiness isn’t complicated; often, it just means doing the things that you enjoy, and doing them well. For example, if you like being outside, an easy way to improve your happiness is to find time for outdoor activities like gardening. 

While knowing what we want to do and choosing to do it is a big part of our happiness, it’s not everything. Even though we all have to take responsibility for our own happiness, we don’t have to find our happiness all on our own. Part of taking responsibility for our happiness is finding those who can help us be happy — and talking to them. 

In fact, forming meaningful connections directly contributes to making us feel happier. Researchers have discovered that people, on average, experience more than an 8% increase in happiness when they are with their friends. Clearly, human interaction serves an important role in our lives.

But often, it can be hard to talk about the things that are weighing on our hearts and minds. We may feel unhappy because we are frustrated, lonely or uncertain, and yet we may not feel comfortable forging the human connections that allow us to talk about these things, clarify our feelings, needs and desires, and empower ourselves to choose what makes us happy. 

Here’s the thing: we can and should build on our human connections to better enjoy our lives and promote our subjective well-being. Through human connection, we learn to find the things that matter to us and, perhaps most importantly, do them with the people who matter most.

Whatever it is that fills our hearts with passion and is truly valuable to us, we can and should pursue it — both in conversation with others, and through our own actions.