Happiness is associated with many positive benefits that can help you improve your health, career, and your personal life. Though did exist at one time. How do you sign up for the class? Stranger Things and It Takes Place in the Same Universe. If the cold weather outside is getting you down, you may be looking for any excuse to start thinking about spring. Psychology professor Laurie Santos debuted the class in the 2018 , and it's officially the most popular course in the university's 317-year history. Her research explores the evolutionary origins of the human mind by comparing the cognitive abilities of humans and non-human animals, including primates and canines. To combat this, Santos suggests investing instead in experiences, such as vacations, concerts, or even just a great glass of wine. Throughout the course, students will learn about happiness from a psychological perspective, including misconceptions about happiness and activities that have been proven to boost life satisfaction.
Given the news that the overall are at an all-time low, I was thrilled to see that Yale decided that these science-based lessons should be available to more people than just Yalies. In May, Santos launched a free, multipart seminar-style series of the course online. So read on, and consider applying these lessons to your own life. And longitudinal studies have shown that people with materialistic attitudes report lower levels of life satisfaction, regardless of how much stuff they acquire. Santos points to one study in which a large group of people were surveyed for many years. Couples who got married did report being happier than the unmarried people during their honeymoon periods, but they came back to baseline after the first 18 months of marriage. Santos cites a study in which 2,000 obese individuals were observed for the first four years of their diet program. Surprisingly, the ones who actually lost weight reported feeling even more depressed than when they started. Santos pointed to another study of teens who got plastic surgery and were followed up with laurie santos coursera years after their procedure. None of them were happier than they were before the surgery either. In her book, The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky looked at the happiness measures of sets of identical twins, and found that while life circumstances only affect 10 percent of our happiness levels, a whopping 50% of what determines how happy we are is genetic. The realization that your levels of happiness are determined by your genetics in such a major way is definitely a bit of a bummer. But look at the bright side. Which means that 40% of our happiness levels derive from things we can control i. Very quickly, you get used to your new life, and you feel the same way about it as your old life. This is called the Hedonic Treadmill, or Hedonic Adaptation, and the best way to work around it is to recognize it exists. Understand that you will not be happier if you get all of the things that you think will make you happy. So how do we free ourselves from expectations. To prove her point, Santos uses the Ebbinghaus illusion, which displays two orange circles, surrounded by blue circles of varying size. Because the blue circles on the left are so large, your brain registers the orange circle on the left as smaller than the one on the right, even though they are both the same. The same goes for our flawed perception of what will make us happy. She pointed to another study that found that people who are unemployed are not unhappy about it so long as they are in a job in which many others are unemployed, or know a lot of other people who are unemployed. You need to actually change habits in order to do that. How do you change these habits. Read on for the exercises that Santos suggests. Invest In Experiences By now, you know that buying stuff just plays into the hedonic treadmill, since you get excited about your new car at first, only to then stop caring a week later. To combat this, Santos suggests investing instead in experiences, such as vacations, concerts, or even just a great glass of wine. Check out you can take this year. To help practice the act of savoring, Santos suggests choosing one activity you enjoy like taking a walk or eating a great meal every day and really savoring it. To enhance the act of savoring, you can share your experience with a friend, take a photo of the activity, make a note of it at the end of the night. Count Your Blessings Research has shown that taking time out to recognize and experience what you have in life can boost your mood, lower your stress levels, strengthen your immune system, feel laurie santos coursera stronger social connection, and lower your blood pressure. Remembering how you felt before can help you appreciate what you have now, and thereby thwart hedonic adaptation. In addition to making you more grateful for what you have. As such, the course suggests performing at least one act of kindness every day. It could be as simple as giving your colleague some laurie santos coursera, donating a few dollars to a worthwhile cause, or taking a few minutes to help a lost stranger. The two crucial ones that she highlights are sleep and exercise, and indeed, an increasing body of research indicates that those are the two lifestyle habits that lead to a happy and healthy existence. Make Social Connections A disturbing report feeling lonely almost all of the time. As such, you should endeavor to make a meaningful connection i. Set Specific Goals Instead of having goals that are abstract and depend somewhat on luck or other laurie santos coursera i.
