The Happiness Project opened up my eyes to what people usually do to be happy, things that I remember seeing when I Googled, “How to be happy” and things like that. However, while the events I did helped temporarily, in the long run, I just return to sort of a neutral state.

I think the most helpful (even if only temporarily) task I performed was the random acts of kindness. I felt good about making other people feel good and that’s the way I usually do things anyway. I would recommend that the most to people.

However, I also realize that there are other people like me out there for whom these things don’t help in the long run, so I would say just do whatever makes you happy. For me, it’s fighting for social justice and writing music. My mom is a big exerciser.

I would say that I am a special exception to the idea that these would make people happy, so I absolutely invite you to test this out to see if any of the activities work for you. I hope they do.