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Throughout The Great Gatsby, the main character, Jay Gatsby, is caught in a difficult position when trying to attain true happiness. In his eyes, the only way he will be truly happy is when he wins back Daisy. For 5 years, he has been attempting many different ways to hopefully get back the one women he loves more than anything. From this, I was able to take away that happiness differs between people because of their personality. Gatsby is quite stubborn and will not let anything else cause joy in his life. For most people, if you are a young, good looking, filthy rich man living in New York, you would be very happy and satisfied with your life. But this story is a prime example of how there cannot be one definition or set of factors that contribute to a universal conception of what happiness is.

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"The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything" -Anonymous

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"The happiest people don't have the best of everything, they just make the best of everything" -Anonymous

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This quote exemplifies the idea that how you live life will make you happier than what you have in life. From this quote, I was able to take away that true happiness is not defined by certain physical factors but rather the actions you choose to display. Also, I felt this was saying that you must make the most of your time because you do not live forever. It relates to people with not a lot of possessions that do not let that hold them back. In order to be happy, nothing can weigh you down and you must be aware of what you can and can not get. You must live with no regrets so you are not stuck worrying about something that will not matter in the future. All in all, how you choose to proceed with certain actions will shape how often you are happy.

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Recently, I reviewed a TIME poll that asked the question, "What makes us happy?". They had almost 1 million results and a majority voted family. I looked closer into how happiness is affected by family and found some key details. Not only do your family members act as your brothers/sisters, but they are considered your best friends as well. Since you are spending almost your whole life with these people, you create the most memories and special moments with them. This creates a tight bond between you guys and ultimately leads to some sort of pleasure whenever you are together. Also, these family members care more about you than anyone else. The one's who often struggle with stress and depression, often feel nobody cares about them. This is directed related to unhappiness. So for one to realize that they always have someone who has faith in them, is key for them to attain true happiness at all times.

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Most people find happiness in family connections and friendships

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Yesterday, I asked my parents for their thoughts about the definition of happiness. Neither of them were able to come up with anything specific and both agreed that happiness changes for everyone. I was able to take away that since not everyone has the same actions and thoughts, how could there be a universal definition that works for everyone. We kept on talking about what true happiness is and came to the conclusion that it is the state of mind when you realize that life is good. But this definition can be broken down into specific factors that affect happiness like the ones I have covered in other posts.

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Kids are often thought of as living a carefree life, where almost anything can make them happy. But as we grow older, this happiness starts to decrease. After reading this article by BBC News, I have noticed some key details in determining this process. During your teen years, it is common to go through a confused stage where you do not really know who you are. Many teens are stuck struggling with depression because they have ran out of ways that can always cheer them up. Later in life, this article points out a "midlife crisis" that occurs for many people during their 30s-40s. At this time in your life, there's so many things to worry about, especially if you have not gotten to the point that you dreamed of. But once this struggle is overcome, old age leads to another carefree stage where you do not have to worry about your job, salary, etc. Ultimately, life is a U shape of happiness, high during your youth and old age, mostly because there's nothing to stress over, and a low during your midlife, where the most stuff is happening.

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When it comes to happiness, it seems that the young and the old have the secret. And it turns out what's true for humans is also true for our primate cousins, explains neuroscientist Tali Sharot.

How does happiness change with age?

Most people assume that as children we live a carefree existence, then we go through the miserable confusion of teenage years ("Who am I?") but regain happiness once we figure it all out and settle down, only to then grow grumpy and lonely with every additional wrinkle and grey hair.

Well, this is utterly wrong.

It turns out that happiness is indeed high in youth, but declines steadily hitting rock bottom in our mid-40s - midlife crisis, anyone? Then, miraculously, our sense of happiness takes a turn for the better, increasing as we grow older.

About the author

Tali Sharot is a neuroscientist at University College, London

* Dara O Briain's Science Club is broadcast on BBC Two on Tuesday 4 December at 21:00 GMT

* Follow @BBCScienceClub

This U-shape pattern of happiness over the life span (high during youth and old age, low during midlife) has been observed across the globe, from Switzerland to Ecuador, Romania to China. All in all, it has been documented in more than 70 countries, in surveys of more than 500,000 people in both developing and developed countries.

How can we explain these counter-intuitive findings?

Does it have something to do with juggling kids and careers in our 30s and 40s? Apparently not. Even after accounting for the presence of kids in the household the U-shape pattern of happiness remains.

Perhaps the pattern is due to generational differences? As studies did not follow the same individuals throughout life, but rather different individuals of different ages, it could be that teenagers and the elderly are happier than the middle-aged because they were born during better times.

But this is not the case. Controlling for " cohort effects" does not seem to affect the U-shape pattern. It also persists when other demographic factors are accounted for, including marital status, education, employment status, and income.

Then, just last month, a group led by Prof Andrew Oswald from the University of Warwick, reported that happiness of our evolutionary cousins - the great apes - also follows a U-shape pattern throughout life.

Of course we cannot ask apes to rate their life satisfaction on a scale from one to 10. But the well-being of 508 apes was estimated by asking their human care-givers to assess it. Apes, like humans, were less happy during midlife than when younger or older.

The existence of a midlife crisis in the great ape strengthens the notion that the pattern of happiness throughout life is not due to socioeconomic factors. This leaves two likely explanations.

Firstly, "the survival of the happiest" - happiness is known to be related to longevity. Put simply, the happier live longer, while the pessimistic die prematurely, possibly because the latter experience more stress, which impacts on health negatively.

Therefore, the elderly individuals who remain for scientists to test should be happier than the average 30- or 40-year-olds. But this only explains the latter half of the U-shape.

Secondly, the U-shape could arise in both humans and apes because of similar age-related changes in brain structures that influence happiness. One part of our brain which changes considerably both throughout the first two decades of our life, and as we move into old age, is the frontal lobe.

Our frontal lobes mature well into our mid-20s and then start deteriorating as early as 45. This means that as we develop, we slowly increase some frontal-lobe function, which we then lose later in life.

One such function is our ability to learn from bad news.

My colleagues and I have found that people tend to discount the relevance of undesirable information to themselves (such as news that alcohol is bad for your liver) but readily adopt good news (being told that red wine is good for the heart). So when smokers see warning signs on cigarette packets they think: "Yes, smoking kills - but mostly it kills the other guy."

At the same when we hear the housing market is going up we think: "The value of my house is going to double!"

Happiness around the world

U-shape pattern is global, but age at which happiness is lowest differs between countries

Happiness hits rock bottom at 35.8 years in UK; low point in US only emerges a decade later; in Italy, happiness hits low at 64.2 years

US citizens are less happy with each passing decade since 1900; in Europe, happiness declined until 1950 and has been increasing steadily ever since

Women are at their least happy at 38.6 years on average; males hit low point at 52.9 years

Using brain imaging techniques we discovered that the tendency to discount bad news is related to how well regions of the frontal lobe are coding unexpected negative information.

Now, you may think that discounting bad news can get people into trouble - for example, causing us to smoke more and save less. There is some truth to this, but it is also good for our mental health.

Our research shows that the successful incorporation of bad news is related to depression. Discounting bad news, as most of us do, presumably allows us to keep a rosy view of the future, and while this view is not necessarily realistic it does keep us happy.

But the tendency to discount bad news also follows a U-shape pattern over our lifespan. Kids, teenagers and the elderly discount unwanted information more than middle age individuals.

The developmental change in the frontal lobes appears to be mirrored by our ability to learn from bad news, which in turn could drive age-related differences in happiness.

So happiness may come at a price - a reduced ability to take into account unwanted information.
Tali Sharot is the author of The Optimism Bias and The Science of Optimism, of which this is an adapted extract You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook
In essence, this means that we may need to re-frame health and safety campaigns, especially those targeted at the young and the elderly. Instead of, or in addition to, labelling a packet of cigarettes with the words "SMOKING KILLS", we may want to print "80% of people who try to quit smoking succeed".

And instead of highlighting the risks of skin cancer on a bottle of sun lotion, how about highlighting the sun cream's benefits (fewer wrinkles, healthier-looking skin)?

Will fewer people reach for another cigarette when we focus on social norms? Will more people protect their skin from UV rays when we emphasise the positive? Each case needs to be tested.

But given that we now know that people tend to respond to warnings with "It's unlikely to happen to me" and to the possibility of a glorious future with "Why not me?" there is reason to believe this may be so.

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When it comes to happiness, it seems that the young and the old have the secret. And it turns out what's true for humans is also true for our primate cousins, explains neuroscientist Tali Sharot. How does happiness change with age?

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Food plays a direct role on your weight. The author of this video references how he felt uncomfortable with himself throughout high school, constantly drinking energy drinks and eating junk food. He soon realized the direct affect the food was playing on his morale. Eventually, he decided to focus on food and cooking, and explore a deeper knowledge behind it. This soon led to a healthier diet which changed his chubby body image to a slim, "normal" shape. This caused some stress to fall off his back, ultimately leading to more happiness in his life. He was trying to show how eating a healthier diet will cause people to be happy with themselves because they don't have to worry about body shape. With a slimmer body shape, it may cause you to receive less weird looks from other people and make you feel more accepted in society.

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How Food Leads to Happiness | New Age Creators

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In a lot of cases, happiness is driven by the income of money. This picture depicts a man showing a happy facial emotion when he sees money. This is similar to Myrtle Wilson from "The Great Gatsby", as she seems to get excited, a form of happiness, when she gets spoiled by a rich man like Tom. There are many others driven with the same motive at Myrtle within the world today. But getting this money could come in many different ways. A different type of happiness would be generated from someone who won the lottery vs someone who became a neurosurgeon after at least 10 years of training before they could make a lot of money.

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Tucker George - Unit 4 KWL - Student Template*