It can be unquestionably conceded that scientific progress is conducive to happiness. The list of ten most important determinants of human happiness would most commonly include

1. Wealth

2. Desire

3. Intelligence

4. Genetics

5.Beauty

6. Friendship (friendliness)

7. Marriage

8. Faith

9. Charity

10. Age.

The debate between the conflicting viewpoints that money can buy happiness and money is the root of all evil and source of misery in reality tends to favour the former. But there is a limit up to which money can "buy" you happiness.  You only need enough to properly feed, clothe, shelter, travel, entertain and socialize without finding financial hardship limiting any of these activities. Generally a Canadian with a gross monthly income of $5000 per month  would be able to meet all his needs with ease and anything more than $20,000 a month would have  almost no effect. The ranges in between the two would make very little difference. Excess of money can predispose to problems like gambling, drug addiction, hazardous lifestyle, conflicts with investors and in extreme circumstances suicide from stock market crashes. Family harmony can be disrupted with extra money.

Researchers repeatedly note the richer people to be happier with their lives. The curve between wealth and happiness is however not a straight line. Despite the fact that in the industrialized nations incomes have skyrocketed, level of happiness has not. It is found that after the basic necessities are met with, money stops being a major determinant of happiness. At that stage the competition or greed starts to be a source of unhappiness. Happiness then begins to relate to the fact of being better off than the friends, coworkers, neighbors and relatives. And the element of jealousy begins to be a cause of source  of unhappiness. We propose to recommend a series of steps that you can take to improve your happiness level without needing to earn a large amount of money. That is why we suggest that you join our group.

"Dollars buy status, and status makes people feel better." says Andrew Oswald, an economist at Warwick University in Coventry, England.  This concept helps explain why people who can seek status in other types of accomplishments or honours and improve their social status, awards, honors etc., enhance their happiness without requiring to enhance their net worth or monthly cash inflow. The fact that attempts at increasing income add to the stress level, strategies that reduce the expenses and conserve your earned money are superior and can be learned.

In the 1980's, political scientist Alex Micahelo, professor Emeritus at the University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George B. C., asked 18,000 college students in 39 countries to rate their happiness level. When asked how close they were to having all their desires fulfilled, it became apparent that those who had a greater amount of non-fiscal needs unmet, (e.g. friends, family support, job satisfaction, health, etc.) tended to be less happy. Those generally content with their life circumstances, on the other hand, were happier. In other words, an intense ambitiousness tends to become a source of distress. The determinant is the perception of the gap or gradient between the target set of personal circumstances and the current circumstances. Changing that perception has a remarkable effect on the level of happiness and the ability to materialize those ambitions, if they are reasonable. This ambition-reality gap tends to greatly displace the effect of net personal wealth and is therefore a lot more powerful determinant of happiness. In fact, this gap appears to be the strongest determinant overall.

Magnitude of 'aspiration gap', explains why there is no increase in the level of happiness pursuant to salary raises. Human greed in fact more than adequately neutralized the happiness from modest salary raises and in the end produces some dissatisfaction, not happiness.

Roper polling assessed the material possessions over the past twenty years, while paying attention to their relevance to happiness or goodness to life. The list of the wants or needs was proportionate to the pre-existing possessions. Therefore the acquisition of material goods appears to promote the desire to own more and produces a progressively incremental dissatisfaction, an anomalous, paradoxical and self-defeating behaviour.

The available data, which is limited, fails to establish a linear progressive relationship between higher I. Q. with happiness. The fact of a clear close direct relationship of higher I. Q.s with higher incomes, in most situations, and the relationship of happiness with wealth would predict a direct relationship between I. Q. and happiness by extrapolative derivation. The element of greater aspiration gap prevalent with those with higher I. Q.s seems to negate the wealth happiness relationship or outweigh it and in the end, results in unhappiness. Mentally subnormal people (those with Down's syndrome for example) with low ambition are often content. The fact of a superior vocabulary which is a given in the case of those with higher I. Q.s, might allow them to describe their dissatisfactions better leading to skewing of the results of their happiness level. The concept of "social intelligence" has been related in a closer fashion with happiness by psychologist Ed Diener of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

If one believes that over 80% (some estimate it to be 95%) of psychology or behaviour patterns are genetically determined, it is easy to understand that the level of optimism or happiness (contentment) with life is also genetically determined. David Lykken, a behaviour-geneticist and professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, believes that our sense of well-being is determined 10% each by the life circumstances and 90% genetically determined "set point" of internal happiness level what we would name 'elatostat' (the dial of the number at which the happiness level is genetically set for that individual at an imaginary scale ranging from -50 to +50.). The force of this elatostat is clearly tremendous. In short you are born a "happy chirping lark" or a "miserable sulking sloth". The factors like wealth, beauty and family support only affect 10%. The way to understand the relationship between 'aspiration gap' and the  elatostat is that for the larks among us the same gap say 200 units would seem to be only 20 units whereas to the sloths the same gap would appear magnified to insurmountable 2000 units of aspiration gap. That is what is commonly spoken of full half (optimistic) versus the empty half (pessimist) view of reality which is objectively proved to be the same by a third dispassionate (to the effects or outcome) observer. It can also be predicted that the offspring of the happy couples are going to be happy children and vice versa.

There has been somewhat more encouraging comment of ability to train oneself to be optimistic and happy which can be found in the comment that "while our happiness set point is largely (90%) determined by our genes" says Lykken, "whether we bounce along above it or slump along under it depends on our - or our parents' - good sense and good training". We probably can , at least to some extent, learn to be happier even if we are borne to be chronically unhappy. Lykken found that genetics account for about 50% of the difference in the happiness levels between two individuals and the environmental circumstances contribute the rest 50%. Elements like wealth, marital status, religion, education level when individually considered did not have more than 3% impact.

The fact of relationship of extroversion to a significantly greater happiness than introversion is well established. Placing a person into a good mood i.e. setting his elatostat at +20 or +30 induces that person to be sociable. Negative values of that degree lead to autoseclusion. Michael Cunningham at the University of Louisville Kentucky has shown that humans become more expressive (verbally and otherwise) after being shown a comedy movie and at least temporarily withdrawn after watching a tragedy. That suggests that manipulation of environment towards utopias can turn the elatostat towards +40.

A painful (to most who are not extraordinariliy attractive looking) truth of life for the majority of humans is that physically very attractive people are happier. But only one in a thousand are gorgeously attractive. A modest but undisputable impact of physical attractiveness on the subjective assessment of happiness is well established. This is easy to understand when one considers the observation that life is kinder to the beautiful humans. They get things presented to them on  a platter. Unattractive people are undesirable everywhere. The geometrical fact of high bilateral symmetry correlates very well with the level of physical beauty and has a strong link to good genes and a healthy immune system. Therefore a high level of healthy optimism and happiness can be viewed as being genetically determined.

Physical attractiveness also induces a sense of euphoria that sets the personal elatostat much higher than an unattractive person in similar circumstance. A powerful determinant of the turn of the elatostat is the perception of the personal attractiveness in a manner that is analogous to the aspiration gap. In fact, the desire to become 'optimally' attractive can be understood as an aspiration gap. Therefore one is able to become happier by changing the perception about how less attractive than desired the person views himself. Being given the message that one is attractive if believed to some extent would result in a boost of morale for that reason. We therefore recommend that we push ourselves to tell others that they are more attractive than they think and not call anyone "ugly".

Using the example of miserable and deprecated life of prostitutes of the slums of Calcutta the  impact of morale boosting effect of friends has been shown by Diener. Their score was not far below the score attributed to the middle-class population of India. Poverty and squalor in themselves failed to induce intolerable unhappiness or anhedonia. Other elements of the study demonstrated that the pleasure derived from the emotional support of friends and extended families more than compensated for the misery of poverty for these slum dwelling prostitutes. The beneficial effect of hugging another human being has been shown very remarkably in Barlow's monkey infants that even tree hugging has been accepted as effective therapeutic strategy against loneliness and low morale. We therefore recommend that people hug as much as possible at all opportunities and better still kiss or touch each other more closely.

Pairing up, usually for life, has become a tradition although biologically humans are not pre-destined to pair for life. The tendency for life time pairing is somewhat stronger is women but even they are biologically designed to have lovers besides their home-providing husbands. The beneficial effect of a stable mate, even if somewhat greater for men, which is being questioned in the recent past, remains undeniable. The question whether marriage produces happiness or happier people are more likely to get and stay married is best viewed as egg and chicken analysis and not easy to dissect. For our purposes we would admit that both are 50% true. Diener in his 15 year study of a sample 30,000 Germans recently proved the fact of happier people to get and stay married. The real impact of marriage on the happiness level (elatostat) begins a year after the date of marriage and is most noticeable for a year, after which the elatostat drops back to pre-marital baseline or plateaus at a higher level. For a permanent elevation of the baseline happiness to take place the marriage must be of an outstandingly higher quality.

Simple cohabitation in a sexually intimate relationship, a trend which is become increasingly popular in Canada, lacks the elatostat up-shifting effect. That leads to the inference of the elation producing role of signing and possessing the marriage documents, which can be viewed as a source of satisfaction and feeling of stability in the life. The search of a mate having been successfully concluded. "My hunch is that cohabiting couples lack the deeper security that comes form the formal band of gold, and that is why they are not quite do happy," says the University of Warwick's Oswald. "Insecurity, we know from all data, is bad for human beings"

Karl Marx was probably correct when he labeled religion an opiate for the masses, as is the truism of the general view of elating mass hysteria that religious chanting induces. Most studies favour the conclusion of happiness being associated with the practice of a religion, any religion. The central theme of religion is to give humans a purpose of life and eliminate the notion of ephemeral and permanently and irrevocably perishable nature of human life. Faith in God and practice of a religion creates the illusion of an eternal existence and elimination of the pain and fear of the knowledge of one's own demise, a characteristic unique to humans.

A unique, beneficial and hard to explain phenomenon of positive health effect on post cardiac- event patients by prayers having been undertaken on their behalf in remote locations suggests an impact of religion that is above human understanding and study. We do not see a great distinction between wishing others well and prayers and recommend that we carry only positive views about the well-being of others. Harboring jealousy, hatred etc., only stands to hurt the person doing that, a lot more than the intended targets of the hatred.

Harold G. Koening of Duke University Medical Centre Durham, N. C., states that believing in an afterlife can give people meaning and purpose to life, and reduce the feeling of being alone in the world, while being alive and more so after death. He adds that seniors stand to benefit more from religious participation because after having gone through the stresses of life, religion does offer a powerful tool for coping with adversity. Despite all these benefits, we do not recommend that people who have never been subscribing to any faith start doing so. Because we do not believe that this subgroup would benefit from doing so. Those who are candidates of benefits of religion are already practicing it. We certainly would not recommend that anyone decrease or discontinue practice of their faith if they are happy with it and can practice it without conflicting with others in their homes.

A relationship between satisfaction with life to all altruistic behavior is also undeniable.  James Konow, an economist at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, has studied the relationship between  altruism and happiness Happier people tend to be more generous, more likely to share and are more altruistic. It was also noted that the baseline elatostat plateau was a better determinant of the degree of altruism than that on the day or time of the sharing. Curiously, even to the altruistic, the act of parting with the valuable resulted in slight transient lowering of happiness level, which would show that the donation itself is not the benefit that is being pursued by these donors. The personality trait of self-actualization was inferred to be the underlying determinant of generosity of the person. The cumulative effect of volunteering is definitely going to make a person happier because of the notion of having self-actualization that ensued from that pattern of behaviour.

The egg and chicken issue here becomes - is it the fact of charitable work that produces happiness or is it that the happy and content people who are innately altruistic and therefore choose to volunteer themselves for charity. In any event, the cyclic and self-propagating effect cannot be denied. We whole heartedly promote altruism and volunteering and invite all to help out only for that reason alone. And the task that we propose to assign to our volunteers would not involve money, simply emotional support and encouragement of others and trying them make them laugh and therefore be happier, healthier and hopeful. The result anticipated is that people would be helping each other instead of hurting each other as we see everywhere these days.

Although the fact that the older humans have a greater burden of adverse life circumstances, like poverty, ill-health, solitary existence, being vulnerable to abuse and crime etc., they are more content with life than younger and middle aged adults. This should be a consolation to many restless people that your golden years will be happier days.

Laura Carsstensen, a psychology professor at Stanford University in California studied the effect of aging on happiness. Older people in her self-reportings compared well with the younger ones. Both reported positive emotions with equal frequency but the older people reported negative emotions less often giving an impression that they were happier with life or that they were better adjusted. This can be best explained on the basis of a difference in expectancies. By expecting less elational stimuli the older humans become more tolerant to adverse circumstances. Lowering of expectancy of elational experiences is a certain way to raise the contentment and happiness level and is also the converse of the aspiration gap'

A greater realization that happiness is not greatly dependent on materials and life circumstances is the most logical explanation for the contentment with life shown by the more mature people. Additional insight of perishable nature of wealth, health, beauty etc. obtained from direct personal experience drives home the message of the transient nature of these attributes. The conclusion that springs out of that observation is that wisdom lies in persistently preferring happiness to the possessions and struggling to change the life circumstances. Changing the perspective or view one takes of the real life circumstances is the quickest way to be happy at least on an interim basis which helps change things such that  pursutt of long-term happiness becomes a lot easier.

In conclusion, you are destined to be happy or sad for the most part and there are few modifications of your thought process that can help. Changing the circumstances is of a very limited value and not worth the effort that would be required to do that. Effort or energy is better invested in changing the perspective at least as the initial step. Let us help you change that.