The Science of Well-Being
The most popular course in Yale’s 321-year history is The Happiness Lab, run by Dr Laurie Santos.
Anyone can enroll in the online version of the course for free – here is the link: https://www.coursera.org/learn/the-science-of-well-being [each of the six modules takes around one hour each]
Dr Santos has been interviewed multiple times on why her course is so popular. We have collated some of the insights and learnings she has shared:
Many things that bring you happiness are hard to create time for – like exercise. 30 minutes of cardio exercise can be as good for reducing the symptoms of depression as an antidepressant. Try and fit these things into the beginning of your day. If you do the same things every morning, you are more likely to embed these good habits.
Many of our intuitions about happiness are wrong. We think it’s about money, achievement and accolades, but the evidence suggests it’s really about simple behaviours like doing good for others and having a mindset of gratitude [if you have not already, please read our article on The Gap and the Gain https://loricapartners.com.au/insights/the-gap-and-the-gain]
There was a recent paper by [University of Pennsylvania senior fellow] Matt Killingsworth where he was trying to make the claim that happiness continues to grow as you get to higher incomes. And he’s right, but if you plot it, it’s like if you change your income from $100,000 to $600,000 your happiness goes up from, like, a 64 out of 100 to a 65. For the amount of work you have to put in to sextuple your income, you could instead just write in a gratitude journal or sleep an extra hour.
There’s a lot of evidence that religious people have greater life satisfaction. But is it the Christian who really believes in Jesus and reads the Bible? Or is it the Christian who goes to church, goes to the spaghetti suppers, donates to charity, and participates in the volunteer stuff? Turns out, to the extent that you can disentangle those two, it seems to be our actions rather than beliefs which primarily drives the fact religious people are happier.
If you build stronger social connections, you will be happier. It’s much easier to do this if you have a cultural apparatus around you – like a club or group of people.
News can be anxiety provoking so think about how much news you consume and how many phone notifications you really need.
Burnout is a big issue for people. It’s not like one morning you wake up and you’re burnt. Instead, over time you note more emotional exhaustion, or what researchers call depersonalisation. You get annoyed with people more quickly. You immediately assume someone’s intentions are bad. You start feeling ineffective. Don’t ignore those signals. Treat it like any health issue.
A psychologist who trained at Harvard, Shawn Achor, espouses similar messages to Dr Santos. I highly recommend you watch his (very funny) 12 minute TED talk here: Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work | TED Talk
The key messages Shawn shares in his TED talk are:
Shawn noticed no matter how happy his fellow Harvard students initially were about getting a place at the university, within weeks of school starting most were focused on workload, competition, and complaints. A positive outlook was soon replaced by a negative attitude.
The science of happiness shows only 10% of our happiness comes from the external world through things like money and material objects. When you finally buy that car you’ve always lusted after, you often find the experience is not as good as you expected.
90% of our long-term happiness is predicted by the way your brain processes the world. For example, 75% of your success at work is linked to your optimism levels, job support, and ability to see stress as a challenge rather than a threat.
Most people think if I work harder, I will be more successful, and if I’m more successful, I will be happier. Unfortunately, this thinking is broken and backwards. Individuals who are happier end up earning higher salaries, rather than the other way around.
When you have success, your brain shifts the goalposts on what success looks like. If you get good grades at school, you want better grades next time. In effect, ‘happiness is always over the cognitive horizon’.
If you can attain the happiness advantage by raising your sense of positivity in the present moment, your brain will perform far better than if it is in a negative, neutral or stressed mindset. Your creativity, intelligence and energy levels will all rise.
If your starting point is a relatively negative outlook, you can change this through 5 actions:
3 gratitudes – for 21 consecutive days write down three things you are grateful for. This will help your brain scan for positive rather than negative messages as a default.
Journalling – helps you relive positive experiences.
Exercise – teaches your brain positive behaviours matter.
Meditation – helps create focus rather than constantly multi-tasking.
Random acts of kindness – send a daily email to someone to say thank you.
A key takeaway from the data used by Dr Santos and Shawn is if you want to be happier – develop better mindsets and behave and feel better – you must do different things. It takes work to be happy. Hopefully the points above may provide an idea.
Author: Rick Walker
One source used for this article: https://www.smh.com.au/national/want-to-be-happier-avoid-these-simple-mistakes-a-yale-expert-reveals-all-20220304-p5a1pa.html