We’ve all heard of the Harvard University study that says people who make lists are much more likely to achieve their goals compared with people who don’t make lists.

If it’s true that making a list is a powerful tool for successful, how about we make a list on how to be happy?

Fortunately, Gretchen Rubin has made that happiness list for us. Gretchen is the author of The New York Times bestseller, The Happiness Project, and as she tells us in this video, she’s been studying happiness and habits for more than 10 years.

Finding inspiration in the lists that Buddhism offers as guides to happiness and meaning – the 4 Noble Truths, the Triple Gem, the 8 auspicious symbols, etc – Gretchen says her 8 precepts sound disarmingly simple, and yet it took much reflection to distill and describe each of her happiness truths:

1.    Feeling good, feeling bad, feeling right in an atmosphere of growth – more love, more enthusiasm, less guilt, anger, resentment, boredom, feeling right by harmonising our actions with our values and living with a mindset of learning, growing, becoming better, helping others

2.    One of the best ways to make ourselves happy is to make others happy – as Gretchen says, making others happy is self-evident but it’s a road less travelled to think that our own happiness is an inspiration for the happiness of others, “do good, feel good”

3.    The days are long, but the years are short – our time is limited and too precious to waste on nonsense of any sort

4.    We’re not happy unless we think we’re happy – only we can know if we’re happy, so we should ask ourselves, “Am I happy?”

5.    I can build a happy life only on the foundation of our own nature – we can build a happy life only on the foundations of our values, our own interests, our own circumstances, our own temperament

6.    The only person I can change is myself – a truly frustrating truth, but as Gretchen says, when we change, we change our relationship with others

7.    Happy people make other people happy, but I can’t make other people happy and no one else can make me happy – in the end, our happiness is our responsibility

8.    Now is now – how we use our time is the only thing we can control, and time is fleeting.

While there does seem to be doubling up of Gretchen’s happiness truths (maybe No.3 and No.8 need more explanation to draw out the differences?), these are simple and highly memorable maxims are enough to get us thinking about the mindset we need to ensure our own happiness.

If there’s one takeaway from Gretchen’s 8 truths, it’s that happiness comes from within and that we need to Switch ON our mindset happiness switch.