People have been searching for the key to happiness at least as long as recorded history. Now, researchers have found that their is no single, uniform solution. A study in the journal Nature Human Behavior shows that happiness can come from either external or internal sources and that its roots vary from person to person and society to society.

Happiness From External or Internal Sources

External influences include things like careers, health, relationships, and wealth. Inner ones can come from practices like therapy, prayer, or meditation.

Both the philosophy of and research into happiness has long looked at this as an either/or proposition. Leaning in either direction actually has important policy and health care implications. The external view is considered a bottom-up perspective. If things like health and wealth improve happiness, then policies could, theoretically improve everyone’s sense of well-being. In the top-down approach, it’s up to individuals to cultivate positivity from within.

Conditions That Cause Happiness

The study, which draws on surveys of about 40,000 people from multiple countries across 30 years, included questions about health, income, housing, work, and relationships. Its results essentially say that the answer appears to be either, neither, or both, depending on the individual.

“What comes out is that we see roughly equal groups that demonstrate each pattern,” Joshua Jackson of Washington University in St. Louis and an author of the study, said in a press release. “Some are bottom up; some are top down, the domains don’t affect their happiness; some are bidirectional and some are unclear.”

Read More: Try These 6 Science-Backed Secrets to Happiness

Well-Being at Societal, Personal Levels

However, these results don’t necessarily mean that society should stop trying to create conditions that promote happiness, or that individuals should give up working on themselves. Instead, it suggests that both policy makers and health care professionals should consider the needs of each individual and be aware that both internal and external factors can help improve peoples’ satisfaction with their lives.

In “The Art of Happiness,” by Howard Cutler, which is based on a series of interviews with the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama suggests that this awareness — and the search for it — can be self-fulfilling.

“Our moment-to-moment happiness is largely determined by our outlook,” the Dalai Lama is quoted in the book. “In fact, whether we are feeling happy or unhappy at any given moment often has very little to do with our absolute conditions but, rather it is a function of how we perceive our situation, how satisfied we are with what we have.”

Read More: Contentment is the Most Underrated Key to Happiness

Article Sources

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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.