Check out some powerful scientific facts about the potential benefits associated with happiness:

* Externalities like weather, money, health, marriage, and religion totalled together account for no more than 15 per cent of what makes life satisfying.

* The pursuit of meaningful friendships and relationships will give you more life satisfaction than the pursuit of pleasure (yep, that includes shopping). Yikes!

* Learning optimism by the time you are 12 halves the likelihood of depression by the time you hit puberty.

* Optimistic people are much less likely to die of heart attacks than pessimists.

* Happy teens go on to earn more income 15 years later than less happy teenagers.

Because it's sometimes easier to talk about things rather than actually put them into practice, we are asking you to support this campaign by making a positivity pledge about how you will boost your happiness levels in 2009.

HEAD HERE to make your own positivity pledge or you can make your pledge by sms-ing 19 700 612.

our Happiness Manifesto !

Check out all the GF team's pledges HERE!