“The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters.”  Audrey Hepburn The amazing thing about happiness is it’s a skill we can learn and practice and make into a habit.    As mentioned in What is happiness and the Neuroscience Behind It, four of the key characteristics of happiness exhibit plasticity, which means we can do something about it, we can grow and develop more happiness. "Happiness is not an accident. Nor is it something you wish for. Happiness is something you design."  Jim Rohn There’s nothing lucky about being happy. Happiness isn’t down to our circumstances, luck, money, career, success, talent, education, weight, looks or age. The good news is there are simple actions we can take to make us happier.  It turns out that simple actions are exactly what it takes to be happier, because the fascinating thing about happiness according to psychologist Ed Diener is that the frequency of positive experiences is more important for your happiness than their intensity. This means we’re more likely to be happier if we have lots of rather nice small things happen in a day rather than one amazing thing. In other words as Daniel Gilbert, author of the 2006 best seller, Stumbling on Happiness noted in an interview for the Harvard Business Review, “So wear comfortable shoes, give your wife a big kiss, sneak a french fry. It sounds like small stuff, and it is. But the small stuff matters.” Here are our first 10 ways to be happy. This is the small stuff, the actions we can do everyday to make us happier and hone our happiness habit.   Most of them don’t take long, and are free.  1. Choose happiness Make the decision to be happy. Say out loud  ‘I choose happiness’.   It sounds ridiculously simple and it is – but ultimately being happy is a personal choice.  Being happy is about attitude and the approach we take.  Happiness is a skill we can learn and a habit we can foster, and it all starts with the decision to be happy. 2. Look up It doesn’t need to be complicated.  Here’s one of the simplest quickest ways to feel happier. Go outside and look up at the sky.  Stand up straight, put your shoulders down. Take in the vastness of the sky and know that you are an integral part of this amazing universe. 3. Be kind and spread the love Say or do something nice for someone today.  It will make you both feel good and especially you.  If you want to feel good – do good! It’s not just about money, it could be giving time or skills, or just helping someone out with a random act of kindness. Even a kind word or smile can make a difference to someone’s day. Try going around smiling at people – it does make you feel good. 4. Move it Get moving - dance, walk, jump, run, skip, swim, gym – however you choose to do it, get some exercise and release your happy hormones. Research into the link between depression and exercise shows exercise improves our mood and makes us feel happier. 5. Be positive Think positive thoughts and experience positive emotions. Positive emotions help us become more perceptive and open to the world, and flexible and creative in our thinking. Which in turn helps us be happier. Thinking positive thoughts means being aware of your thoughts and the self-talk when it veers into the negative and replacing them with more positive empowering thoughts. One great way of doing this is through affirmations.   6. Cultivate optimism Is your glass half full or half empty? It might be a cliché but it nicely demonstrates the different way in which optimistic and the opposite of optimistic – pessimistic, people view the world.  The same events and circumstances elicit very different responses based on our attitude. It sort of stands to reason that optimistic people are happier because they’re not looking