Happiness is an important part of life — no less than anger, sadness, and fear. But how do you know if you're happy? Are you as happy as most people? If you have lots of money or a fancy title at work, shouldn't that be enough to make you happy? Discover how balancing your life is one way to achieve overall happiness.

There are three core components to a coherent life, without which it’s difficult, if not impossible, to achieve happiness. These components are order, affiliation, and meaning. Each of these components is important in its own right, but it’s the combination of the three that determines where you fall on the continuum of coherence.

Only in recent years have psychologists begun to appreciate the benefits of happiness and positive emotion — benefits that include everything from enhanced creativity to improved immune-system function. Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina, a leader in the field of positive psychology, posed the question, “What good are positive emotions?

Beyond the simple reality that optimists are happier people (and happiness is what you’re striving for), optimism has other benefits as well. So, if you want to achieve greater happiness, try being optimistic for a day. Optimists enjoy a greater degree of academic success than pessimists do. Because optimistic students think it’s possible for them to make a good grade, they study hardier and they study smarter.

Psychologists believe that, to cope with life, a person must have coherence — optimism, with a sense of control; each of us needs to feel that life is generally understandable, manageable, and valuable.For most people, it's easy to find one thing in life that gives them coherence, the sense of confidence they need to embrace life with all its twists and turns.

Your emotions, including your happiness, are affected by the world you live in — your physical and social surroundings. If you’re in sync with that world, you have a much better chance of achieving happiness.Where do you stand when it comes to being in sync with your surroundings? Would you describe your relationship with the world around you as a tight fit, a loose fit, or no fit at all?

A truly happy person will try their best to find the win-win solution at work. All types of work inevitably involve conflict. Why? (Spoiler alert: it's human nature!)People who work alongside one another are either striving to achieve the same goals — recognition and advancement — or they have different views about how things should be done at work.

Some families have priorities — things that they feel are most important, things that make them happy and are crucial to family life that give the family a clearly defined sense of direction and purpose. Other families do not — they’re like tumbleweeds, blowing this way and that and getting nowhere in particular.

Happiness is about those great unforgettable moments in life. So, if you were asked to identify the ten best moments of your life, could you do it? If it’s difficult for you, is that because you haven’t had that many “best moments” or because it’s been so long since you had one that you can’t remember? Are you just too busy trying to survive the modern-day rat race?