Parent Time

Witnessing your baby’s first toothless grin, taking your nine-year-old to the end-of-summer fair, sharing your tween’s excitement as she heads off to the movies with her BFF: Parenting is filled with many moments of sheer delight. Of course, given that gummy smiles often precede spit-up, candy- floss-filled nine-year-olds and roller coasters don’t always mix, and BFFs can become BBB (boring beyond belief) overnight, it’s no surprise that even the sunniest parent can find happiness as elusive as being first in line for soccer registration.

Luckily, social scientists are discovering that happiness is not simply a by-product of our circumstances. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, discovered that life circumstances, such as health and finances, account for a slim 10 percent of our happiness. While about half of our happiness is in our genes (some people are just born Pollyannas), a significant 40 percent is directly within our control. Want to get happy? Here are five surefire strategies:

1. Set goals and achieve them together

It’s often tempting to skip doing stuff with the entire family. Hey, we get it. Everything involving kids takes time, organization, patience and energy — who needs it, right? You do. The satisfaction and confidence that comes from completing a defined task is a big part of feeling happy. Gretchen Rubin, author of the forthcoming book The Happiness Project, makes gingerbread houses with her kids every Christmas. “Each year, it’s a big production and, each year, it’s worth it.” Rubin believes you have to take on challenging but achievable goals, like taking up a brand new sport or organizing all those JPEGs into a family photo album.

Originally published in Today's Parent, September 2009