Apr 12, 2019

Happiness Class

Yale's most popular class ever, "The Science of Well-Being," was designed by professor Laurie Santos.  She collected all the psychological science related to happiness and came up with a step-by-step process for boosting your own happiness.
The class has already been taken by more than 225,000 students online. About one in four students at Yale have taken it since it was first offered. Santos designed the course for three reasons: to synthesize what psychologists have learned about making our lives better, to help undergrads overcome stress and unhappiness on campus, and to live a better life herself.
A few exercises include:
Focus on your strengths - Identify your signature strengths and refocus on them each day. Studies show happiness increases and depression decreases when a person uses his or her signature strengths regularly.


Invest in experiences - Going for a walk or traveling to a new place are much better investments in terms of happiness than buying material things. Your stuff loses "happiness value" almost as soon as you have purchased it. Paying for experiences, however, has multiple benefits for happiness, including the anticipation of the experience leads to more happiness and joy. Also, talking about the experience afterward with friends reignites your own happy memories and, sharing these tales with friends tends to boost their happiness, too.

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