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NEW YORK — As a motivational speaker and executive coach, Caroline Adams Miller knows a few things about using mental exercises to achieve goals. But last year, one exercise she was asked to try took her by surprise.

Every night, she was to think of three good things that happened that day and analyze why they occurred. That was supposed to increase her overall happiness.

"I thought it was too simple to be effective," said Miller, 44, of Bethesda, Md. "I went to Harvard. I'm used to things being complicated."

Miller was assigned the task as homework in a master's degree program. But as a chronic worrier, she knew she could use the kind of boost the exercise was supposed to deliver.

She got it.

"The quality of my dreams has changed, I never have trouble falling asleep, and I do feel happier," she said.

Results may vary, as they say in the weight-loss ads. But that exercise is one of several that have shown preliminary promise in recent research into how people can make themselves happier — not just for a day or two, but long-term. It's part of a larger body of work that challenges a long-standing skepticism about whether that's even possible.

There's no shortage of advice in how to become a happier person, as a visit to any bookstore will demonstrate. In fact, Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues have collected more than 100 specific recommendations, ranging from those of Buddha through the self-improvement industry of the 1990s.

The problem is that most of the books on store shelves aren't backed up by rigorous research, said Sonja Lyubo-mirsky, a psychologist at the University of California-Riverside who is conducting such studies now.

In fact, she said, there has been very little research in how people become happier.

Why? The big reason, she said, is that many researchers have considered the quest to be futile.

For decades, a widely accepted view has been that people are stuck with a basic setting on their "happiness thermostat." It said the effects of good or bad life events such as a marriage, a raise, a divorce or disability will simply fade with time.

We adapt to them just like we stop noticing a bad odor from behind the living room couch after a while, this theory says. So this adaptation would seem to doom any deliberate attempt to raise a person's basic happiness setting.

But recent long-term studies have revealed that the happiness thermostat is more malleable than the popular theory has maintained.

Other studies show an effect of specific life events, though of course the results are averages and can't predict what will happen to particular individuals. Results show long-lasting shadows associated with events such as serious disability, divorce, widowhood and getting fired from a job.

The boost from getting married, on the other hand, seems to dissipate after about two years, said psychologist Richard E. Lucas of Michigan State University.

What about the joys of having children? Parents recall those years with fondness, but studies show that raising children takes a toll on marital satisfaction, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert said.

Many people want to be happier. What can they do? That's where research by Lyubo-mirsky, Seligman and others comes in.

The think-of-three-good-things exercise that Miller, the motivational speaker, found so simplistic at first is among those being tested by Seligman's group at the University of Pennsylvania.

People keep doing it on their own because it's immediately rewarding, said Acacia Parks, a Seligman colleague. It makes people focus more on good things that happen — things that might otherwise be forgotten because of daily disappointments, she said.

A second approach that has shown promise in Seligman's group has people discover their personal strengths through a specialized questionnaire and choose the five most prominent ones. Then, every day for a week, they are to apply one or more of their strengths in a new way.

Strengths could include the ability to find humor or summon enthusiasm, appreciation of beauty, curiosity and love of learning. The idea of the exercise is that using one's major "signature" strengths may be a good way to become engaged in satisfying activities.

These two exercises were among five tested on more than 500 people who logged on to a Web site called Authentic Happiness (www.authentichappiness. sas.upenn.edu/). Seligman and colleagues reported last year that the two exercises increased happiness and reduced depressive symptoms for the six months that researchers tracked the participants. The effect was greater for people who kept doing the exercises frequently. A follow-up study has recently begun.

Another approach under study now is having people work on savoring the pleasing things in their lives, such as a warm shower or a good breakfast, Parks said. Yet another promising approach is having people write down what they want to be remembered for, to help them bring their daily activities in line with what's really important to them, she said.

Can money buy happiness? Maybe.