When someone asks you, "How are you doing?" do you automatically say, "I'm fine"? Most of us do…but it's probably not true. Most of us are dissatisfied, frustrated or stressed out. The good news is that you don't have to take major action to feel a major impact in your happiness.

If you can find something new and enjoyable to do with just 6% of your waking hours—that's about one hour per day or one afternoon a week—your entire life will be more satisfying. So go ahead—do something you haven't done before. You'll go from saying "fine" to feeling truly great.

More ways to get happy:

• Forget Self-Esteem!
• Are You Destined for Happiness? How to Tell
• Happiness Is Your Problem

If you are looking forward to being happy—and see happiness as the end result or at the end of an emotional finish line—think again. A lot of people think of happiness this way, but this is backward, says Robert Biswas-Diener, PhD, a life coach and coauthor of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth (Wiley). Reason: People are so busy looking ahead that they miss all the times when they are happy in the moment. It’s better not to hope for a happiness ideal but instead to appreciate all the little ways that happiness creeps into your life, such as an unexpected hug from a child or streams of sunlight pouring into your kitchen. Hold onto those moments, and don’t forget to say to yourself, This is great. I’m happy right now.

"We're still the people we were when we were young," writes Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project (Harper). If biking, fishing, swimming or sculpting clay figures made you happy when you were young, it probably still will!