We're inundated with headlines about how well-being — especially among younger people — is cratering. Podcasters, psychologists and startup founders have put forth formulas on how we can boost happiness levels.

• But there might be a refreshingly uncomplicated hack to being happier if we just flip the equation, Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank writes.

💰 The money quote: "[T]he surest path to happiness for many of us could be as simple as this: Stop trying to be happy — and start figuring out how to make other people happy."

Zoom in: Milbank bases that conclusion on the results of a six-year study from Cornell.

• Researchers set out to test whether feeling a sense of purpose would make members of Gen Z — often described as an anxious and directionless generation — feel happier.

🧑‍🎓 Over the past six years, Cornell psychologist Anthony Burrow and his team have randomly selected 1,200 high school and college students to receive $400 "to pursue what matters most" to them.

• Each student had eight weeks to use the money on something that benefited their families, communities or themselves.

After eight weeks, researchers compared the well-being, sense of purpose and belonging of those who received the money to a control group.

• Though both groups started out with similar scores, the recipients showed significant improvement.

💡 Zoom out: What's exciting about the preliminary results of this study is that we can all replicate it by thinking of ways to give our time and resources.

• Parents or teachers could experiment with giving kids some money or some time to spend on an activity that they feel does some good — whether that's donating to a local soup kitchen or volunteering at an animal shelter.

The bottom line: Cornell's Burrow told Milbank, "Invite people to think about a contribution they want to make and help them [to] make that contribution, and that person may walk around with greater purpose than if they hadn't done that."

• More on the research.

A car drives along a road near Hakenberg, northeastern Germany, today as trees with changing leaves cast shadows on a farmer's field.