If you’re a human being then your main goal in life is probably to end up happy. Unless you’re emo. Then you’re not a human being at all. If you ask anybody on the street what they want most in life, they’ll most likely say that they want to die happy. It’s just in our nature to strive for ultimate happiness. But how exactly does one go about achieving happiness? And what is happiness exactly? Is it purely an emotion, or does being happy transcend just an in-the-moment chemical reaction? It’s different for everyone, but as you will find in this infographic, there seems to be some commonalities shared between humans about happiness.
For instance, the area of the brain responsible for the happy emotion is known as the hippocampus. Inside this little happy hippocampus, a feel-good chemical known as serotonin runs around and sprinkles fairy dust and cupcakes all over the place, until it runs low and leaves you feeling cold and suicidal. Serotonin is one of the reasons people feel awesome on any kind of mind-altering substance, and then like death because they have depleted all of it. So don’t do drugs.
Most of the info on this little infographic points to one key element to staying happy: stay healthy. There’s more interesting facts on here that are worth checking out, but if you want to be happy, be healthy. [via]