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THE PSYCHOLOGY�OF HAPPINESS

What does it mean to live well?

Isabella Garbett

University of Canterbury | Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha

U3A Ashburton · 2026

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A little bit about me

Why am I talking to you about happiness?

I study how we can support wellbeing before things go wrong.

RESEARCH

PhD candidate in Psychology�University of Canterbury

BACKGROUND

Law + psychology + postgraduate research�across academic and professional settings

WHAT I’M INTERESTED IN

What actually helps people live well —�and how we translate research into real life

Today: less “how to be happy” — more “what does living well actually look like?”

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN�TO BE HAPPY?

Think of a time in your life when you would say you were genuinely happy.

What was it about that time that made you call it happiness?

01

HAPPINESS�IS NOT ONE�THING.

A question humans have been asking for millennia.

I want to start by asking you to think of a time in your life when you would say you were genuinely happy.

It doesn’t have to be the happiest moment of your entire life. Just a period or a moment where, looking back, you would say, “Yes, I was happy then.”

And then think about why you call it happiness.

Was it because you felt joyful? Because life was going well? Because you were surrounded by people you loved? Maybe you were doing something difficult, but it mattered enormously to you.

You don’t have to tell anybody your answer — just keep it somewhere in the back of your mind.

Because what sounds like a very simple question — “What is happiness?” — becomes surprisingly difficult once we actually try to define it.

And humans have been arguing about that for a very, very long time.

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The pursuit of happiness is not new.

Different eras have offered different answers to the same question: how do you live life well?

c. 2100 BCE

GILGAMESH

Joy in ordinary life:�food, celebration, companionship.

4th–3rd c. BCE

EPICURUS

Pleasure as tranquillity:�basic needs, friendship, freedom from fear.

4th c. BCE

ARISTOTLE

Eudaimonia:�not simply feeling good, but living well.

MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

TODAY

Happiness becomes something we try to define — and measure.

The disagreement is ancient. Psychology inherited it.

Sources: Forgas & Baumeister (2018); Lomas et al. (2021); McMahon (2008); Ryan & Deci (2001).

The idea that we should work out how to live well certainly isn’t something psychologists invented.

Some of the earliest surviving writing we have asks versions of exactly this question.

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, more than 4,000 years ago, we find this emphasis on ordinary human pleasures — food, celebration, companionship, enjoying the life in front of you.

Later, Epicurus gets associated with “pleasure,” but he wasn’t really advocating constant indulgence. His idea of a good life was much quieter: having our basic needs met, good friends, tranquillity, and freedom from unnecessary fear.

Aristotle gives us something different again: eudaimonia. That’s often translated as happiness, but “flourishing” or living well is probably closer. It’s not simply about whether I feel pleasant right now; it’s about the quality of the life I’m living.

So already, thousands of years ago, we have this disagreement:

Is happiness about feeling good? Is it about satisfaction? Is it about relationships? Or is it about living a good and meaningful life?

Modern psychology inherited that disagreement. We just added questionnaires and statistics to it.

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So what does psychology mean by happiness?

(It’s a bit complicated)

→

The answer is unfortunately: it depends who you ask.

Psychology doesn’t have one universally agreed definition of happiness.

Part of the problem is conceptual — researchers are interested in slightly different things. But part of it is also measurement.

If I ask you “How happy do you feel right now?”, I’m measuring something quite different from asking:

“Taking everything together, how satisfied are you with your life?”

And that’s different again from asking whether you have meaning, purpose, positive relationships or a sense that you’re developing as a person.

So when you see a headline saying “Researchers find X makes people happier,” one useful question is:

What exactly did they measure when they said happiness?

And there’s a very famous example of this.

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How do you measure the happiness of a country?

147

Countries included in 2025 report

World Happiness Report

Measured using Cantril Ladder
2025: Finland #1 · Afghanistan #147
New Zealand #12 �

KEY TAKEAWAY

It measures life evaluation — not simply whether people feel happy.

Source: Helliwell et al. (2025)

1,000

people per country, per year

3 years

Scores averaged across three years

You’ve probably encountered the World Happiness Report when the rankings appear in the news each year.

You’ve probably seen this reported in the news each year: Finland is the happiest country in the world.

In the 2025 World Happiness Report, Finland ranked first, Afghanistan ranked 147th, and New Zealand came in at number 12.

The report draws on data from around the world, generally around 1,000 respondents per country per year, with rankings based on three-year averages.

But here’s the interesting thing:

They don’t actually rank countries by asking people, “How happy are you?”

The central measure is the Cantril Ladder, which measures how people evaluate their lives.

So when we say Finland is the world’s “happiest” country, what we really mean is something closer to: People in Finland, on average, evaluate the quality of their lives very highly.

That’s important, because life evaluation and feeling happy aren’t necessarily the same thing.

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Where are you on the ladder?

The World Happiness Report asks people to evaluate their life — not simply report their mood.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

BEST POSSIBLE LIFE

10

WORST POSSIBLE LIFE

0

Where would you place your life today?

Source: Helliman et al., 2025

This is essentially the question they’re answering.

Imagine a ladder running from zero to ten.

At the top is the best possible life for you.

At the bottom is the worst possible life for you.

Where would you put yourself today? You don’t need to tell me — just choose a number.

And now notice something about what I just asked you. I didn’t ask:

“How happy are you right now?”

You might have had a terrible sleep last night, be annoyed about something that happened this morning, or have a headache — and still think, overall, “Actually, my life is pretty good.”

Or you could be having a lovely morning and still be dissatisfied with important parts of your life.

That’s why distinguishing evaluating our lives from the emotions we’re experiencing in a particular moment is important.

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World Happiness Report

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Subjective wellbeing

Yet another approach

POSITIVE AFFECT

How often do I feel good?

pleasant emotions • enjoyment • enthusiasm

NEGATIVE AFFECT

How often do I feel bad?

sadness • worry • anger • distress

LIFE SATISFACTION

How do I evaluate my life overall?

a judgement about life as a whole

Feeling happy right now ≠ judging your life to be a good one.

Sources: Diener & Seligman (2004); Ryan & Deci (2001).

Another way of thinking about happiness is through the lens of subejective wellbeing. Happiness is inherently subjective if you really think about it – example: Think back to the World Happiness Report doesn’t actually walk around asking people: “How happy are you?”

When you say ‘I’m happy’, what do you actually mean?” Pleasure? Contentment? Satisfaction with your life? Meaning? Absence of distress? Feeling positive emotion?

And this usually includes several components.

There’s positive affect: how frequently am I experiencing pleasant emotions — enjoyment, enthusiasm, happiness?

There’s negative affect: how frequently am I experiencing sadness, worry, anger, distress?

And then there’s life satisfaction: when I stand back and evaluate my life overall, how satisfied am I with it?

These things are related, but they aren’t interchangeable.

You can have a stressful week and still be deeply satisfied with your life.

You can also experience plenty of pleasant moments while thinking that something important is missing from your life.

So again: Feeling happy right now is not necessarily the same thing as believing that you’re living a good life.

And psychology has another distinction that takes that idea even further.

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Feeling good and living well are related — but not identical.

HEDONIC

FEELING GOOD

Pleasure�Enjoyment�Comfort�Positive emotion

“Does my life feel good?”

EUDAIMONIC

LIVING WELL

Meaning�Purpose�Growth�Living in accordance with values

“Is this a life worth living?”

Sources: Delle Fave (2021); Ryan & Deci (2001); Semenov & Nedeljković (2023).

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Which was the ‘happier’ day?

A

SATURDAY A

Sleep in.

Beautiful breakfast.

Sit in the sun.

Favourite music.

Excellent dinner.

Nothing stressful happens.

B

SATURDAY B

Get up early.

Help family move house.

Look after grandchildren.

Volunteer.

Have a difficult conversation.

Come home exhausted.

Sources: Delle Fave (2021); Ryan & Deci (2001).

Which felt better?

Which contributed more to a meaningful life?

Imagine these two Saturdays.

Saturday A is lovely. You sleep in. Have a beautiful breakfast. Sit in the sun. Listen to music you love. Have a fantastic dinner. Nobody asks anything difficult of you. Nothing goes wrong.

Saturday B is objectively much more annoying .You get up early. Help somebody move house. Look after grandchildren. Volunteer. Have a difficult but necessary conversation. Come home absolutely exhausted.

Which one felt better?

Probably Saturday A.

But now change the question:

Which contributed more to a meaningful life?

And suddenly the answer isn’t obvious.

Maybe it’s A. Maybe it’s B. Maybe it depends entirely on the person and the circumstances.

That’s the point. There isn’t necessarily one correct answer because a good life contains both enjoyment and things that matter enough to require effort.

And if we use the single word “happiness” to describe all of that, we need to be clear about what we actually mean.

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THE TAKEAWAY

Happiness is messy, and it’s certainly not uniform.

There’s still culture, wealth, climate, freedom, and measurement discrepancies to consider.

Sources: Bolle & Kemp 2009; Kemp et al., 2023; Minkov, 2009.

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“

If we can’t even agree what happiness is… why are we so convinced we’re supposed to feel it all the time?

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02

EXPECTING�HAPPINESS

When does wanting to feel good start getting in our way?

Should we expect to be�happy all the time?

Is wanting to be happy actually good for us?

So should we expect to be happy all the time?

And perhaps even before that — is wanting to be happy actually good for us?

The obvious answer seems to be yes. Most of us would probably say that we want to be happy, and we certainly wouldn’t deliberately choose to be unhappy.

But there’s an important difference between saying ‘I would like to be happy’ and saying ‘I should be happy.’

Because as soon as happiness becomes something we believe we should be experiencing, we’ve created an expectation. And expectations give us something against which to judge our actual emotional experience.

So what happens when I think I should be happy… and I’m not?

Interestingly, there’s now a substantial body of psychological research suggesting that the way we pursue happiness can sometimes actually get in the way of experiencing it.

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The happiness paradox

When happiness becomes a standard we have to achieve, the pursuit itself can backfire.

EXPECTATION

I SHOULD�FEEL HAPPY

→

MONITORING

AM I HAPPY�ENOUGH?

→

DISCREPANCY

NOT QUITE.

→

DISAPPOINTMENT

WHY NOT?

The gap between how we feel and how we think we ought to feel can become another source of distress.

Sources: Mauss et al. (2011); Zerwas & Ford (2021)

One of the classic studies in this area was published by Mauss et al. in 2011. It essentially asked: Can seeking happiness make people unhappy?

What they found helped establish what has become known as the paradox of pursuing happiness.

Imagine I place a really high value on feeling happy. That gives me an expectation: I should feel happy. And because happiness is important to me, I start monitoring it: Am I happy? Am I happy enough?

What happens if I notice the answer is… not really.

Now there’s a discrepancy between how I actually feel and how I believe I should feel. And that discrepancy can itself become disappointing.

So now I haven’t just got the original unpleasant emotion. I’m unhappy about being unhappy.

And you can probably see how that can become a fairly unhelpful feedback loop.

Importantly, though, the research does not mean that simply wanting to be happy is bad for us. The issue is more nuanced than that. Problems can arise when happiness becomes a rigid standard that we’re continually monitoring ourselves against.

And that’s an important distinction, because this 2011 finding became quite famous and sometimes got reduced to the catchy idea that ‘trying to be happy makes you miserable.’

The research since then tells a more complicated story.

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SO… SHOULD WE STOP�TRYING TO BE HAPPY?

NO.

The newer question is not whether happiness should be pursued — but how.

PITFALL

Rigidly monitoring or demanding positive emotion can carry costs.

PROMISE

Intentional activities can support subjective wellbeing.

CONTEXT

Goals, strategies and circumstances shape whether pursuit helps or harms.

Ford (2025); Mauss & Ford (2026); Ng (2025)

So does this mean the solution is to give up on happiness entirely?

No.

If we think about the early findings showing that the pursuit of happiness could sometimes backfire. Since then, researchers have become much more interested in asking when, why, and how that happens.

In fact, Mauss and Ford published a review this year called The Pursuit of Happiness: Pitfalls and Promises, and I think that title captures the current state of the evidence really nicely.

There are pitfalls. If pursuing happiness means constantly checking our emotional state, trying to eliminate every unpleasant feeling, or believing that we have somehow failed whenever we’re unhappy, that can carry costs.

But there are also promises. There is good evidence that intentional activities and psychological interventions can improve aspects of subjective wellbeing. Ng’s 2025 review, for example, looks at a range of wellbeing-boosting interventions.

So the question isn’t really:

‘Should I pursue happiness or shouldn’t I?’

A much better question is:

‘How am I pursuing it?’

What am I actually trying to achieve? What strategies am I using? What else matters to me? And am I leaving room for the fact that a normal human life contains emotions other than happiness?”

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WOULD YOU PRESS THE BUTTON?

You will never feel�sadness again.

PRESS

What else disappears with it?

— grief when somebody matters

— concern when something is wrong

— disappointment when something matters

— signals that something needs to change

Wellbeing is not simply�MAXIMUM POSITIVITY.

Sources: Gruber et al. (2011)

So let me give you a hypothetical. Imagine I have a button here. And if you press it, I can guarantee that you will never experience sadness again. Not less sadness. None. Would you press it?

At first that can sound quite appealing. Sadness is unpleasant. If we’re trying to maximise happiness, surely getting rid of it would be an improvement. But think about what sadness is attached to. If I break up with someone I really loved, would I actually want to feel nothing? It sucks, but it also feels like this because there was attachment.

Disappointment often exists because something mattered to us. Concern or anxiety can alert us that something isn’t right or that something important requires our attention. Anger can tell us that we perceive an injustice or that a boundary has been crossed.

That doesn’t mean negative emotions are always useful, or that more sadness, anxiety or anger is somehow better. Clearly these emotions can also become overwhelming. The point is simply that psychological wellbeing cannot be reduced to: more positive emotion = good; more negative emotion = bad.

Gruber, Mauss and Tamir described this as the possible ‘dark side of happiness’ — happiness isn’t necessarily beneficial in every amount, in every form, or in every context. A psychologically rich life inevitably contains emotions that don’t feel good.

And that takes us back to the distinction we made earlier: feeling good and living well aren’t necessarily the same thing.

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“I’ll be happy when…”

Finish the sentence privately.

WANT

→

GET

→

ADAPT

→

NORMAL

Extraordinary can become ordinary.

Adaptation is real — but it is not universal, complete, or identical across life events.

Think back:

What is something you once desperately wanted…

…that is now simply part of your normal life?

And how often do we postpone enjoyment until the next milestone?

Diener et al. (2006); Mathias et al. (2024); Park et al. (2023)

I want you to finish this sentence in your head: ‘I’ll be happy when’.

For me, maybe it’s when I retire. When the mortgage is paid off. When I’ve finished this project. When I’ve gone on that trip. When something changes in my family. When I have more money.

Now I want you to think about something else. What is something you once desperately wanted that you eventually got — and which is now simply part of your normal life?

People have a huge capacity to adapt to changes in our circumstances. Something can initially feel extraordinary, but over time it becomes incorporated into everyday life. Now, there’s an important correction to the popular version of this idea. You might have heard of the ‘hedonic treadmill’ — the idea that good or bad things happen and eventually we simply return to a fixed happiness baseline. The evidence is considerably more complicated than that.

Diener, Lucas and Scollon argued back in 2006 that adaptation theory needed revising. People don’t necessarily have one fixed set-point. People differ in how much they adapt, different areas of wellbeing can change differently, and there are significant life events to which people do not completely adapt. More recent work continues to treat adaptation as a dynamic process rather than an inevitable return to exactly where we started.

But there is still an important lesson here. If our strategy for happiness is always: ‘I’ll be happy once I get the next thing…’we risk continually moving the finish line. And there’s some interesting recent research on the belief that happiness should be delayed — essentially living as though enjoyment belongs at some future point when the work is done or the conditions are finally right.

Which raises quite a confronting question: How much of our life are we prepared to spend waiting to arrive at the part where we’re allowed to enjoy it?

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MAYBE WE’RE GETTING�BETTER AT THIS.

Learning from older adults

Successful happiness pursuit may depend on pursuing happiness in ways that work with — rather than compete against — other important life goals.

HAPPINESS

+

OTHER�GOALS

COMPATIBILITY

So different question...

Does happiness change as we age? →

Wong & Gong (2026)

A paper published this year by Wong and Gong: Learning from older adults: An intergoal compatibility account for successful happiness pursuit.

And I really like the framing of that. Because there’s sometimes an assumption in conversations about healthy ageing that psychologists should be telling older adults what they need to do to maintain their wellbeing.

But this paper essentially turns that around and asks: What can we learn from older adults about pursuing happiness successfully?

Their argument centres around intergoal compatibility. Basically, happiness doesn’t exist as the only goal in our lives.

We also care about relationships. Health. Family. Meaning. Contribution. Responsibility. Personal growth. Whatever happens to matter to us.

And pursuing happiness may work better when the ways we pursue it are compatible with those other goals, rather than competing against them.

So, for example, spending time with people you love might simultaneously support happiness, connection and meaning. Whereas treating happiness as an isolated goal — something we need to maximise regardless of everything else — may be much less successful.

And this gives us some food for thought: Our relationship with happiness doesn't remain static over the course of our lives.

What we pursue changes, so to does how we pursue it, an our priorities alongside that .

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03

AGEING &

HAPPINESS

WHO IS HAPPIER?

25

or

75

What would you predict?

Later life does not produce the simple, inevitable emotional decline we might expect.

The relationship between age and wellbeing is much messier — and more interesting.

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Time changes what matters.

SOCIOEMOTIONAL SELECTIVITY THEORY

TIME FEELS EXPANSIVE

FUTURE

exploration�learning�new information�expanding networks

TIME FEELS MORE FINITE

MEANING

close relationships�emotionally meaningful goals�present-focused experience�appreciation of time

Does an ordinary Tuesday feel more valuable now than it did at 25?

Charles & Carstensen (2010); Carstensen et al. (2024)

One of the most influential theories for understanding emotional ageing is socioemotional selectivity theory, developed by Carstensen et al.

The basic idea is: our sense of how much time we have influences what we prioritise.

When time feels expansive, as it often does when we’re younger, we’re more likely to prioritise future-oriented goals. But when time feels more finite, priorities tend to shift towards things that are emotionally meaningful now. And importantly, this isn’t simply about chronological age. The theory is really about perception of time.

So here’s something I’d be interested for you to think about:

Does an ordinary Tuesday feel more valuable to you now than it did when you were 25?

Because one possibility is that recognising time as finite doesn’t necessarily make life worse. It can make us more selective about what deserves it.

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WHAT DESERVES YOUR ATTENTION?

Maybe the world doesn’t�become more positive.

Maybe our attention changes.

The age-related positivity effect describes a relative shift away from the stronger negativity bias seen in younger adulthood.

−

NEGATIVE

↓

+

POSITIVE

Reed & Carstensen (2012); Carstensen & DeLiema (2018)

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Strength AND vulnerability

Ageing can bring emotional strengths without making us immune to stress.

STRENGTH

Experience can support:

Choosing situations selectively�Avoiding unnecessary conflict�Regulating emotional responses�Prioritising meaningful relationships

VULNERABILITY

Some stressors cannot be avoided:

Chronic health problems�Bereavement�Caregiving demands�Prolonged or high-intensity stress

Both can be true at once.

Charles (2010); Scheibe & Carstensen (2010)

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A REAL-WORLD�STRESS TEST

COVID-19

Older adults faced disproportionate health risk alongside disruption, isolation and uncertainty.

What did the pandemic reveal about ageing?

VULNERABILITY

Isolation, disrupted routines and reduced access to support could carry significant psychosocial costs.

RESILIENCE

The literature also resists treating older adults as a uniformly fragile group: experiences and outcomes varied.

Sources: Seckman (2023)

COVID gave researchers a rather unfortunate natural experiment for some of these ideas.

Older adults were facing disproportionate physical health risks, while also dealing with isolation, disrupted routines, uncertainty, and reduced access to normal sources of connection and support. And there was a lot of public messaging at the time that essentially treated older adults as one uniformly vulnerable group.

But that's not what the psychological literature showed. There absolutely were significant psychosocial costs — loneliness, distress, disruption, loss.

But outcomes also varied enormously. Some older adults showed remarkable adaptation and resilience despite extremely difficult circumstances.

And I think that's an important distinction: Resilience doesn't mean something difficult didn't affect you. It means adaptation can occur in the presence of difficulty.

We'll come back to that near the end.

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HOW OLD ARE YOU?

Not chronologically.

How old do you feel?

Take a number in your head.

ACTUAL AGE

____

FELT AGE

____

Subjective age and perceptions of ageing are associated with psychological wellbeing — although the direction and mechanisms are complex.

Age is something we live — not only something we count.

Alonso Debreczeni & Bailey (2021); Ugwu & Idemudia (2025)

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SO, DOES HAPPINESS�CHANGE AS WE AGE?

YES — BUT NOT BECAUSE AGE WORKS LIKE A SWITCH.

Time horizons.

Attention.

Emotion regulation.

Health.

Relationships.

Later-life wellbeing emerges from the interaction between the person and the circumstances around them.

Which leads to the next question: how much control do we actually have? →

Buecker et al. (2023); Sulandari et al. (2024)

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04

CONTROL &�CIRCUMSTANCE

How much of your happiness is actually up to you?

PUT A NUMBER ON IT.

How much of your happiness�do you think is within your control?

10% 40% 80% ?

Psychology has offered a pretty tidy answer.

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The famous happiness pie

A hugely influential model of sustainable happiness

50%

GENETIC / SET-POINT FACTORS

Heritable influences and relatively stable individual differences.

10%

CIRCUMSTANCES

Life circumstances and external conditions.

40%

INTENTIONAL ACTIVITY

Deliberate behaviours and activities.

Lyubomirsky et al. (2005)

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THERE IS A PROBLEM�WITH THIS PIE.

50% heritable

≠

50% of YOUR happiness is genetically fixed

→

Variance between people is not a personal change budget.

→

Genes, environments, circumstances and behaviour are not independent slices.

→

A population estimate cannot tell one person exactly how much they can change.

The original authors later revisited the pie-chart interpretation.

Sources: Brown & Rohrer (2020); Sheldon & Lyubomirsky (2021)

The biggest problem is what that 50% actually means.

If a study estimates happiness as 50% heritable, that does not mean half of your happiness is permanently fixed by your genes.

Heritability is a population statistic. It describes variation between people in a particular population under particular conditions. It doesn't divide an individual person into genetic and non-genetic pieces. And these categories aren't independent anyway.

Your genes can influence the environments you seek out. Your circumstances influence which behaviours are available to you. Your behaviour can change your circumstances.

So I think this is the simplest way to remember it: Variance between people is not a personal change budget. Even the original authors later revisited how this model had been interpreted.

If people are interested: Authors basically said the pie chart has taken on a life of its own. The percentages were never meant to be read as saying 40% of your personal happiness is sitting there waiting for you to change it. What they were really interested in was whether intentional activities could produce more sustainable changes in wellbeing.

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Wellbeing happens somewhere.

Nobody pursues happiness in a vacuum.

MONEY

income + financial security

BODY

health + functional ability

HOME

housing + neighbourhood

SOCIETY

freedom + institutions

PEOPLE

support + community

ACCESS

healthcare + resources

If circumstances barely mattered, why would wellbeing differ so systematically across societies?

Ahmadiani et al. (2022); Araki (2024); Emmerling et al. (2021); Li & Hu (2026)

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“MONEY CAN’T�BUY HAPPINESS.”

Well…

The contemporary evidence is more complicated than the slogan.

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS

Income is associated with life satisfaction and emotional wellbeing.

There is no universal magical�“$75,000 happiness ceiling.”

Money may matter especially because financial insecurity constrains choices, safety, housing, healthcare, time and exposure to stress.

And higher income can coexist with more stress.

Killingsworth et al. (2023); Thomson et al. (2022); Akkiraju & Rao (2025)

Which brings us to perhaps the most famous circumstances argument:

“Money can't buy happiness.” Well… sort of.

You may also have heard the claim that money increases happiness until you earn about $75,000, and then it stops mattering. That finding became super famous, but it is complicated.

Income is associated with both life satisfaction and emotional wellbeing, and there doesn't appear to be one magical universal income threshold where money suddenly stops mattering for everybody.

That’s probably not hugely surprsing, money can affect housing, healthcare, safety, choices, time, exposure to stress and the ability to absorb unexpected expenses.

That doesn't mean more money automatically equals more happiness — higher incomes can coexist with greater stress too. But! financial security can absolutely change the conditions in which we're trying to live well.

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Relationships sit in the middle.

Part choice. Part circumstance.

WE CAN INFLUENCE

call someone�join a group�show up�invest in friendships�help other people

WE CANNOT FULLY CONTROL

bereavement�other people’s choices�mobility + transport�where opportunities exist�whether support is reciprocated

Agency and circumstance are constantly interacting.

Chen & Feeley (2014); Monteiro et al. (2025); Sulandari et al. (2024)

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But circumstances aren’t destiny either.

There are things we can do that measurably support wellbeing.

AGENCY�MATTERS.

Influence is real.�Complete control is not.

PPIs

Randomised positive-psychology interventions show benefits.

Effects vary by intervention, person and context.

OLDER ADULTS

Psychological and lifestyle interventions can improve wellbeing.

Effects vary by intervention, person and context.

Koydemir et al. (2021); Solanes et al. (2021); Iwano et al. (2022); Clark et al. (2012)

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THROW AWAY THE PIE.

We have influence —�not complete control.

WHO WE ARE

genetics · personality · health

↕

WHERE WE ARE

income · resources · society

↕

WHO WE HAVE

relationships · community · belonging

↕

WHAT WE DO

behaviour · habits · meaning

↕

WELLBEING

Agency without blame.

If happiness isn’t completely controllable, perhaps happiness itself isn’t the best target. →

Brown & Rohrer (2020); Tamberg et al. (2026)

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SO…

WHAT CAN�WE ACTUALLY DO?

We cannot guarantee happiness.

But we can support the conditions in which happiness is more likely to flourish.

Think foundations, not happiness hacks.

Sources: Iwano et al. (2022); Solanes et al. (2021)

05

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Start with the foundations.

Not glamorous. Very difficult to replace.

SLEEP

rest + recovery

MOVEMENT

function + capability

CONNECTION

relationships + belonging

NUTRITION

fuel + raw materials

Abud et al. (2022); Marzo et al. (2023); Sulandari et al. (2024)

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Four foundations. Four useful questions.

SLEEP

Am I giving myself a real opportunity to recover?

Sleep and wellbeing influence one another.

MOVEMENT

What helps my body keep doing the things I value?

Think function, strength, balance and participation.

CONNECTION

Who do I want to keep showing up for?

Social support and engagement matter across later life.

NUTRITION

Am I giving my brain and body what they need?

Overall dietary quality and nutrient adequacy matter.

McAuley et al. (2000); Sulandari et al. (2024); Abud et al. (2022)

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NUTRITION

Your brain is�an organ, not separate world.

Food does not “make” happiness — but the brain depends on nutrients to carry out ordinary biological work.

Rucklidge et al. (2021); Conner et al. (2017); Jyväkorpi et al. (2017)

BRAIN

mood · stress · cognition · behaviour

GUT + MICROBIOTA

digestion · microbes · metabolites

DIET

NEURAL

vagus nerve +�neural signalling

IMMUNE

inflammation +�immune activity

ENDOCRINE

hormones + stress-�response systems

METABOLITES

compounds produced�by gut microbes

I want to spend slightly longer on nutrition because we talk about it in my lab alllll the time. Professor Julia Rucklidge and the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Group at Canterbury have spent years researching the relationship between nutrition and mental health.

And there's a very basic idea underneath that work that I think we sometimes forget: Your brain is an organ, it doesn't float separately from the rest of your body.

Vitamins and minerals participate in ordinary biochemical processes. The brain needs energy and nutrients to carry out its normal biological work.

Now, this does not mean I'm saying supplements make everybody happy, or that food is a treatment for every psychological problem. BUT! overall dietary quality, nutrient adequacy and variety matter. No single “superfood” contains everything your body needs.

Your gut and your brain are constantly communicating. This is called the microbiota–gut–brain axis, and the important word here is bidirectional. Signals travel both ways.

There are neural pathways, including the vagus nerve, there are immune pathways and inflammatory processes, there are endocrine pathways involving hormones and our stress-response systems, and microbes in the gut produce metabolites — compounds that participate in signalling throughout the body.

And the brain influences the gut too. Anyone who's ever felt physically sick when they're anxious already has some intuitive experience of that connection.

BUT! It is not evidence for a magic probiotic. The practical recommendation remains much less exciting: dietary quality, variety, adequate nutrients, and fibre-rich foods.

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But foundations aren’t the whole house.

What makes a life worth participating in?

MEANING

LEARNING

CONTRIBUTION

ATTENTION

ENJOYMENT

PURPOSE

Ryan & Deci (2001); Delle Fave (2021); Iwano et al. (2022)

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Resilience isn’t being fine.

It does not mean…

×

you weren’t affected

×

you didn’t struggle

×

you handled it alone

×

you returned to exactly who you were before

RESILIENCE CAN LOOK LIKE

adapting�accepting help�changing expectations�grief + continued meaning�using resources around you

Seckman (2023); Hornby-Turner et al. (2017); Abud et al. (2022)

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“

You don’t build every resource on the day adversity arrives.

Relationships, routines, capability, coping strategies and community can all become part of the scaffolding.

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DON’T CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Pick one thing.

1

What is already working?

2

What has slipped?

3

What is one thing worth strengthening?

Small enough to actually do.

Specific enough to know when you’ve done it.

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What does living well look like�for you now?

What deserves more of my attention?

Which relationships do I want to invest in?

What gives my days structure and purpose?

What matters to me even when it isn’t enjoyable?

The goal isn’t to feel happy all the time. It’s to build a life that can hold happiness, difficulty, meaning, connection and change.

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“

The goal isn’t to feel happy all the time. It’s to build a life that can hold happiness, difficulty, meaning, connection and change.