Helping other people makes you happy. No, that’s not just a lesson from a religious instructor or your Grandma. It’s what researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky says she finds in recent studies, as reported on the Greater Good blog.

She used students for one study, asking them to do acts of kindness for others over certain periods of time, with a control group that performed none. Even though what people considered “kindness” differed, the results showed that we can affect up to 40 percent of our happiness by how we act and what we do.

Do we just feel better about ourselves or are we making new connections because we slow down and take time to help someone else? Whatever the reason, it sounds like something worth experimenting with ourselves as we pursue our own happiness and spread a little happiness to others at the same time.

Click here to read more about Lyubomirsky’s findings.