I am writing this post on International Happiness Day, an
occasion brought into being by the United Nations to promote happiness and
wellbeing as a human right. What a nice
way to celebrate the completion of the Coursera course on wellbeing!
Despite my many blessings, I often struggle to be happy,
which is why I signed up for the course to begin with. At the outset, we students were asked to
gauge our happiness through two metrics, Authentic Happiness and PERMA, run
through the University of Pennsylvania and Yale, respectively. At the conclusion of the course, we were
prompted to take the quizzes again. I’m “happy”
to report that both tests registered my increased feeling of wellbeing. And yes, I’m just plain … happy!
In my two recent posts, I talk about particular aspects of
the course that resonated for me and strategies that I learned to augment wellbeing. Here, I just want to take a moment to reflect
on the impact of the course overall.
One aspect of the project that kept me engaged was our
professor’s presentation of data gleaned through careful psychological
experiments. As a scientist, I really
appreciated that rigor, though I have to say that often the studies seemed a little
“underpowered”, as measurements often lacked error bars or statistical
significance. Still, one got the
impression that overall, there really was something there.
These vignettes opened up new avenues in my thinking,
leading to insights into both my own attitudes and behaviors as well as those
of others around me. Here’s a little
nugget, for example: did you know that spending money on experiences, like a
dinner with a friend, rather than a thing like a new gadget, is a better return
on your investment towards happiness? Memory,
it turns out, has no hedonic adaptation, but stuff does. Or that the mind doesn’t think in absolutes, only
relatives? No wonder that we try to keep
up with Joneses, rather than being satisfied or grateful for what we already
have. Or that developing a “growth”
mindset, rather than a “fixed” one promotes happiness?
Finally, I have to ask myself, would my happiness have gone
up if I had completed any other 10-week Coursera course? I love learning and I love projects, so maybe
if I taken a course in Greek history I would be feeling the same buzz now. Unless one does the control, we will never
know if I’m feeling better because I’ve been studying happiness, or just
studying. What do you think? Seems like somebody should study that.
No comments:
Post a Comment