What leads to true happiness? Is it long-lasting friendships or landing a job that you're proud of?

Arthur Brooks, social scientist and happiness researcher, studies the happy feeling and has found many answers to this burning question along the way.

Brooks' online Harvard course about managing happiness has more than 180,000 enrollees, and he's published multiple books about the emotion, including his most recent, "The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life."

Though there are many theories about what increases happiness, "every once in a while, people in my profession need to get practical," Brooks writes in his new book.

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"Based on what they see in the data from experiments and surveys, what should we do that is both effective and feasible for increasing our happiness, starting today?"

Here are 10 practices that Brooks says leads to true happiness.

10 tried-and-true ways to boost your happiness

Brooks considered the results of a 2020 study done by a team of scholars from different parts of the world, that compiled 68 ways that people are often encouraged to improve their happiness. The researchers then consulted 18 of the most established experts on the science of happiness to rank the practices based on efficacy and feasibility.

Based on their answers, and Brooks' expertise, here are the top 10 ways to boost happiness:

  1. Keep your mind and body active(Hell trying to get stroke solved to 100% recovery is great for the mind, except for beating my head against the fucking stupidity of our stroke medical 'professionals' who don't know how to get stroke solved to 100% recovery!)
  2. Be nice to others(Yeah, I'm calm all the time.)
  3. Spend your money on loved ones(Friends for me. They think I'll be the one to turn out the lights and finish off that last bottle of bourbon.)
  4. Check on your health status(My health is great considering the stroke, compared to friends with pre-diabetes, macular degeneration, knee and hip replacements.)
  5. Join a club("I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member" by Groucho Marx,) 
  6. Engage in physical activity(Partially limited because my doctor COMPLETELY FUCKING FAILED TO GET ME RECOVERED!)
  7. Belong to a faith and practice it (Not for me)
  8. Go out in nature(Yeah, forest bathing for me.)
  9. Build connections with colleagues outside of work(Retired, my social connections are  vast.)
  10. Give back and be generous(Learned this from my first co-worker 50 years ago; Always be the first to pick up a group tab. And never whine about things not being even!)

Brooks admits these happiness tactics aren't completely connected. The best way to increase your chances of being happier is to develop an integrated strategy that allows these practices to feel more cohesive, he says.

To do this, Brooks recommends getting a better understanding of happiness by learning about it, building healthy happiness hygiene by turning these practices into habits and sharing what you learn with others to help them do the same.

"The most important thing to remember is this: You don't have to leave your happiness up to chance," he says.