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The 3 Components of Happiness (And to What Degree You Can Control Your Mood)

Season 6 Episode 617
Aired on 11/08/2015 | CC tv-14
Are you a Tigger or an Eeyore?

Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project and Better Than Before, says everyone has a baseline happiness, and one person's level may be quite different than someone else's. That doesn't mean, however, that you have no control over your moods. Within a specific range, Gretchen says, you can shift your day-to-day happiness upwards or downwards based on your actions.

"We can push ourselves up to the top of that range or push ourselves down to the bottom of that range on our conscious thoughts and actions" she explains. "So yeah, maybe one person's an Eeyore and one person's a Tigger, so their range would be different, but we can all do the best with what we have."

In the video above, Gretchen shares the three elements comprising happiness—and explains to what extent we have control over our moods.