EE Happiness

Happiness is a muscle: here’s how to strengthen it

With the new year firmly in our minds, here are the best ways to give your sense of wellbeing a boost

By Arielle Domb

As we welcome in 2025, it’s worth taking the time to reflect on the year that we’re bidding farewell. When did you last feel truly happy – or bored, anxious or sad? Where were you? Who were you with? What were you doing? According to Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, “there is no magic one-size-fits-all solution” when it comes to happiness, but the first step – which is often skipped over – is introspection. What kind of person are you? What appeals to you? What works for you? What do you want? One useful way to examine the fluctuations in our moods is to consider our life in categories: our relationship with learning, the places we call home, the role that work plays in our life, and how we seek out playful moments of joy.

"You want to feel like

Humans want to feel that they belong somewhere. Whether we live alone or with others, Rubin suggests that we ask ourselves: “How is my home a place that strengthens our relationships?” For decades, psychologists have argued that spending money on experiences rather than things makes us happier. But Rubin argues that the distinction isn’t so clear-cut. Is a wooden dining table – that facilitates family dinners, romantic meals and potlucks – a thing or an experience for instance? “Money cannot buy happiness, but money can buy many things that lead to happiness”, she says. “It's really a question of: are you wisely and intentionally choosing how you spend your money.” If we are living alone, filling our homes with objects that connect us to people we love can go a long way, whether that’s Wi-Fi bluetooth smart speakers to play the songs that remind us of our childhood or a smart picture-frame TV loaded with photos of our families and friends. We can also purchase things that make us feel safer and more at ease when we’re home alone, like a smart security system fitted with a video doorbell, two wireless cameras and two smoke detectors.

“Money can't buy happiness, but money can buy many things that lead to happiness”

Gretchen Rubin

Bruce Hood

It’s not unusual for people to admit that their school years weren’t always the happiest. According to a 2024 study conducted by Schools Week, only 47 per cent of students said they were happy at school – the first time in the survey’s history that it’s fallen below 50 per cent. What can be done to make our schools happier, more stimulating places? John Jerrim, a professor of education and social statistics at the University College London, has conducted groundbreaking research into the mental health of primary school students, finding that – contrary to popular opinion – national tests don’t seem to impact students’ mental health. However, he believes that some reforms should be made in GCSE testing process, which caused mental health issues for 77 per cent of year 11 students in 2024. Jerrim suggests cutting down testing to a one-week period and giving students one grade for “overall achievement across subjects”, which would “free up time [for students] to do other things”.

According to a Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2023 report, 90 per cent of the UK workforce is unhappy at work. How can we find work that energises us and makes us excited to start the day on Monday? One way to find more enjoyment in our work is by working out how we can get into a flow state. In the 1970s, Hungarian-American psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified ‘flow’ as a feeling of being in the zone – a satisfying experience where arousal and boredom, anxiety and relaxation, and control and worry are perfectly balanced. "Control of consciousness determines the quality of life,” he wrote in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. “The more control we have over our attention, the more likely we are to be happy.” But how do we get there?

We all know the feeling of sitting at our desks feeling bored or weary, counting down the hours. How can we feel more alive in the moment, more attuned to the joyous and beautiful and silly parts of our life? According to Rubin, the answer lies in our five senses – tuning into what we see, smell, taste, hear and feel in our everyday lives. “A lot of times we're very passive about it,” she explains. “But these are tools that we have with us all the time.” Rubin has designed a number of activities to help us tune into our sensory environment, including a neglected sense quiz and creating a five-senses portrait of someone we love, picking five notable memories for each sense. Finding opportunities for playfulness is paramount for people of all ages. Play can improve our mental health, releasing endorphins that can reduce stress; boost creativity; and provide opportunities for socialising and bonding. But as we get older, many of us find playfulness missing from our lives. On the EE store you can purchase a variety of gaming bundles, to play alone or with a group of friends, for the Sony PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X, the Nintendo Switch and a variety of virtual-reality headset devices, providing ample opportunity for escape and enjoyment.

When we’re feeling stuck, there are several exercises we can try to help us feel better. Hood suggests a practice called ‘psychological distancing’, which involves reflecting on yourself in the third person or imagining how you would view your life five or ten years from now. “Directing your attention externally is a way of getting a more objective viewpoint on your situation,” he says. Hood also recommends gratitude diaries as a valuable tool during difficult times. “When you are grateful for your position, you're acknowledging that other people are less fortunate,” he explains. Looking back through old journal entries can be just as helpful, he adds: “You'll see that one year ago you were worried about some relationship you couldn't care less about now, but at the time it was the most important thing in your life. This is tangible evidence that life can get better, and you do get over adversity.”

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Whether they are preparing for exams or want a break from academic pressure, children and teenagers can develop skills outside the classroom thanks to helpful platforms like EE LearnSmart. Designed specifically for 11 to 17-years olds, this can help young people manage stress with an exam survival guide, give them confidence-boosting skills, or help them learn a new skill, whether that’s byte-sized coding or backyard chemistry. Hood believes that changes need to be made to prepare teenagers for life after education too. “[Students] find it really difficult to accommodate and adjust to life outside of universities,” he says. Hood advocates investing time in teaching ‘practical wisdom’, focusing on relationships, financial literacy and mental well-being, which he believes would significantly support students as they transition into life after education. EE LearnSmart’s Apprentice Nation playlist is filled with actionable activities and skills for teenagers thinking about their lives post-education, with tailored career advice to land their dream jobs – whether that’s breaking into journalism with columnist Sonia Sodha or mastering their radio presenting skills with Capital Xtra’s Remel London.

Learning to be more fulfilled

A work in progress

Rebuilding your sense of fun

Happiness is a muscle

According to Rubin, the first step is identifying our optimum work environment. “What kind of sensory surroundings do you need to allow you to do your best work?” she asks. “If you work better with busy chatter, don't work home alone in your house… or at least get a busy-chatter soundtrack which you can get for free on YouTube.” Whether it’s a pair of Apple Airpods Pro with active-noise cancellation and adaptive transparency or EE Broadband’s Work Mode (that maximises connection when using apps like Zoom or Microsoft Teams), EE offers a number of products to help boost our focus and get into the zone.

Using apps like Calm (EE customers can enjoy a free trial) can help with this reflective thinking: it has a variety of science-backed tools and activities to help soothe anxiety, from listening to soothing soundscapes and sleep stories to guided meditations and breathing exercises. As we embrace 2025, it’s worth remembering that happiness is like a muscle – it needs to be exercised for it to grow. Indeed, studies into the well-being of students who completed Hood’s Science of Happiness course revealed that boosts in happiness are short-lived unless habits and activities are maintained over a long-term basis. “It requires constant effort,” Hood says. “It's just like any other habit; you need to keep at it in order to see the benefits of it.”

It all begins at home

If we are living with others, introducing simple practices like always saying “hello” and “goodbye” as we come and go can significantly impact the atmosphere of our living environments. “You want to feel like you matter to people; that they care that you come and go,” says Rubin. According to psychology professor Bruce Hood, who developed the highly popular Science of Happiness course at the University of Bristol, we can also enhance our feeling of connectedness by putting down some ground rules around our phone usage. “You should not have your phone out at the dinner table,” Hood says. “If you want to have a good social interaction, deliberately put it outside, put it out the way.” Wi-Fi controls from the EE app can be a good way to help switch off devices for that well-needed family time, making it easier than ever to take our eyes away from our screens and give maximum attention to the people we love.

EE is on a mission to provide hints, tips, hacks and shortcuts across these four categories in order to jump-start our happiness journeys. With a host of products and services from innovative learning platforms for kids to mental health apps, EE is supercharging our opportunities to experience happiness, connection and curiosity in our daily lives. While there is no simple recipe for happiness, tuning into each of these segments of our lives can help us identify what is and isn’t working. Then we can implement actionable, impactive changes to cultivate a happier, healthier and smarter life.