There’s no simple answer for how to be happy, but many brilliant individuals have dedicated their lives to finding the answer nonetheless. Matt Killingsworth is one of them. A Harvard-educated psychologist and senior fellow at the esteemed Wharton School, Killingsworth has led numerous studies designed to uncover the secret to happiness. In one of his biggest undertakings, he helped design TrackYourHappiness.org, “a large-scale research project that uses smartphones to collect real-time happiness data from people around the world.” The findings he’s cultivated over the course of his career are mandatory reading for anyone who wants to maximize the joy they get out of life. Here are just a few takeaways from his body of research: 1. Money can buy happiness. Really. Money can buy most people a little more happiness. Photo credit: Canva A groundbreaking study conducted in 2010 by Daniel Kahneman and others found that money does not make you happy. Or rather, money increases happiness only up to around $60–$90,000 per year—enough to live comfortably and without many of the hardships associated with poverty. Beyond that point, Kahneman found no additional benefit to earning more money when it came to happiness. Killingsworth’s own research disagreed, showing “a linear relationship between happiness and income” with essentially no upper limit. The two authors came together to reconcile their findings in a paper titled “Income and emotional well-being: A conflict resolved.” In the end, they determined that the “flattening” effect applies only to the least happy people. Meanwhile, the happiest people continued to get happier as their wealth increased. In other words, if you aren’t happy to begin with, more money probably won’t help. But if you’re generally pretty happy, having more resources allows you to maximize your joy in new ways. 2. Buying things doesn’t move the needle. Buying experiences does. It’s hard to say exactly why having more money continues to make most of us happier, but some of Killingsworth’s other research may offer a clue. Money makes a lot of problems in our lives go away. But as the old saying suggests, having a lot of money also creates new problems. One thing large amounts of money do allow us to do is buy things that can help us experience joy. Well, not necessarily things. Experiences make us happier than things. Photo credit: Canva In his paper with fellow authors Amit Kumar and Thomas Gilovich, Killingsworth finds: “Spending on doing promotes more moment-to-moment happiness than spending on having. Relative to possessions, experiences elicit greater in-the-moment happiness.” The study found that experiences trumped possessions in nearly every category of satisfaction, including anticipation, moment-of-consumption, and remembrance. Vacations, concerts, parties, and adventures are a far better use of your money than cars, clothes, and other material items. 3. The joy is in the waiting Speaking of anticipation, Killingsworth has found that it is sometimes one of the greatest elicitors of happiness. In the published paper “Waiting for Merlot,” Killingsworth and his co-authors argue that waiting eagerly is a crucial element of extracting joy from experiences, and reiterate that the happiness we feel while anticipating an experience or event far outweighs the joy we get from waiting for a material possession. Happiness expert and New York Times bestselling author Gretchen Rubin agrees. She writes that there are four keys to maximizing how happy an event makes you. The first is anticipation, but savoring the moment, sharing it with others, and reflecting back on it often round out the magic formula. “Anticipation is a key stage; by having something to look forward to, no matter what your circumstances, you bring happiness into your life well before the event actually takes place,” she writes. “In fact, sometimes the happiness in anticipation is greater than the happiness actually experienced in the moment—that’s known as ‘rosy prospection.'” 4. Being present is a happiness superpower In “A wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” Killingsworth dropped one of the biggest truth bombs of his career. He and his co-author Daniel Gilbert found “that people are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and … found that doing so typically makes them unhappy.” In an essay for the University of California, Berkeley, Killingsworth writes that many of the other factors involved in happiness are relatively superficial: “Yes, people are generally happier if they make more money rather than less, or are married instead of single, but the differences are quite modest.” Our ability to stay present in the moment and take joy in our lives—not what’s already happened, or what’s coming next—is incredibly powerful: “We found that people are substantially less happy when their minds are wandering than when they’re not, which is unfortunate considering we do it so often. Moreover, the size of this effect is large—how often a person’s mind wanders, and what they think about when it does, is far more predictive of happiness than how much money they make, for example.” It’s no wonder so many scientists, philosophers, and researchers have dedicated their careers to understanding the mysteries of happiness. After all, most people simply want to live a happy life, and feeling fulfilled can make us healthier and help us live longer. Finding happiness is easier said than done. Killingsworth’s research suggests that being rich and checking things off your bucket list can help in the search, but ultimately the most important part is learning to find joy in the everyday moments. The post Wharton researcher discovers money can buy happiness. But these 3 other things matter just as much. appeared first on Upworthy.