But figuring out how to achieve and maintain happiness on top of everything else most women have going on isn't always easy, as the studies keep showing us.

That's why it's interesting to see how Michelle Obama manages to maintain balance in her hectic role as first lady. One way that Obama - who has been working to get health-care reform and will help pitch Chicago as the site for the 2016 Olympics - does it is by not downplaying her own needs the way so many of us do.

"I think my mother taught me what not to do," Obama says in an upcoming issue of Prevention magazine. "She put us first, always, sometimes to the detriment of herself. She encouraged me not to do that. She'd say being a good mother isn't all about sacrificing. It's really investing and putting yourself higher on your priority list."

Not that Obama hasn't stumbled. The first lady, who describes herself as a "closet jock," said that after her oldest daughter was born she completely stopped working out. "My husband's exercise routine hadn't changed a bit; he was still getting his workouts in, and I was getting irritated," Obama said in an interview that took place in July. "Then I realized he was just prioritizing it differently."

She got around that situation by rising at 4:30 a.m. to fit her workouts in.

Her message to women is that it's about making yourself happy: "Throughout my life, I've learned to make choices that make me happy and make sense for me. Even my husband is happier when I'm happy.

"So I have freed myself to put me on the priority list and say, yes, I can make choices that make me happy and that will ripple and benefit my kids, my husband and my physical health. That's hard for women to own. We're not taught to do that. It's a lesson that I want to teach my girls so they don't wait for their 'aha' moment until they are in their thirties like I was."

After my column last week about how, despite advances from the feminist movement, women are less happy than they used to be, I heard from readers who blamed females themselves for not experiencing more joy, a harsh assessment, I thought. But you can't argue with the tendency for some of us to take on too much.

"Women set impossible standards for themselves to live up to," an online commenter wrote. "They compete with each other for the perfect life. . . . For example, my mom drives herself crazy tying perfect bows on perfectly-wrapped Christmas presents. I wrap my gifts in newspaper (if I wrap them at all) with a piece of Scotch tape - both serve their purpose."

Another wrote: "I think women 'had it all' and gave it up over the past 40 years. I mean the economic reality of the times dictates that most families need multiple incomes just to survive and certainly that alone has fueled much that has occurred under the 'Women's Movement.' But, the logic of 'having it all' has always been flawed or, more likely, was never really there in the first place."

Syreeta Scott, owner of the Philly-based Duafe hair salon, spent years focusing on her expanding businesses and on her investment properties while ignoring her social life. She told me that her own "aha" moment came after looking in the mirror and noticing she'd gained 15 pounds.

"It was the pounds and it was also the realization that I didn't have anyone - there was no balance," said Scott, 35, who finally treated herself to a personal assistant. "The phone had stopped ringing as much. Invites came fewer. . . . I'm re-establishing relationships that feel good. I'm taking a yoga class and I'm asking for help."

Those small changes help to up her happiness quotient. My question for everyone else is: What do you do to make yourself happy? How do you add joy to your life? Have you made a point of prioritizing your workouts the way Michelle Obama did? E-mail me your responses and I may include them in an upcoming column.

Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.