Feeling Blue? Here's Why, and What to Do

Did you know that being happy is really a numbers game?

You can pretty much break it down, by percentages, what your happiness quotient can be.

A whopping 50 percent comes down to your genes, or what researchers call your "genetic set point" of where you'll revert back to, sort of like metabolism, or any number of other things you want to blame your parents for.

Another 40 percent of happiness is attributed to what we do deliberately to make ourselves happy (hedonists and gluttons must be, like, super happy, no? Oh ... yeah, probably not.), and that last little 10 percent is more surprising than you might think: life circumstances.

Prevention magazine gives a few counterintuitive guidelines for achieving happiness. Think that chocolate, pizza, or glass of wine will give you a boost? Not so fast. Actually, looking at photographs accounted for people feeling better by 11 percent as opposed to the booze, which only accounted for a low-simmering 1 percent, according to researchers at the United Kingdom's Open University. I'll take this opportunity to link you to CuteOverload.com. Mood cookies!

Other surprising ways to turn that frown upside down include eating nuts (they raise omega-3 levels which may help with depression), clearing away clutter, and ... chopping up vegetables (?). Apparently it's one of integrative medicine maverick, Dr. Andrew Weil's favorite ways to unwind.

Hey, don't knock it till you chop it.

Read the full article here.

[Via MSN]

Photo courtesy of Billy Alexander@sxc.hu