The Pursuit of Happiness

As I sit here comfortably- hair down, wearing tights and a tank top- at my desk in the alcove of mine and Kathryn's room (stadium view out the window!), I realized something. I'm happy. Blogging makes me happy. I was legitimately excited to sit in this exact spot and write something, whether for my personal use or for whoever is nice enough to care about me and/or read my posts!

I think the only thing that would make me happier is doing it with an ocean window view on a bay window...but I have years to work up to that. For my journalism news reporting course, I attended a lecture today titled "Pursuing happiness: What works and why" by Professor Kennon Sheldon. And I have all semester to attend speakers, but why did I choose this specific one? Because I didn't think I was happy. Amidst a busy week, I wanted to hear him speak specifically on this topic. How can you pursue happiness in a stressful college life? Stop everything you want to do, half-'ass' (for lack of a better word) your way through courses, do an activity or two, and miss out on everything you could have done in college and shrug it off later with free time? NO!!!

So in order to stay involved, functioning and happy at the same time, I listened carefully to the lecture. In addition to discussing his research studies, book reviews and more, there were a few key points I found most interesting about Sheldon's presentation that explain a lot about life.

• Sustainable Happiness Model: Three broad categories help to determine your subjective well being- genetic constant (50%), demographic circumstances (10%) and intentional activities (40%). Hedonic adaptation is part of the demographic circumstances, your genetic constant helps determine your set point and base line, and intentional activities are important and controllable. The implication here, according to Sheldon, is that you must change what you DO to account for 40% (or more!) of your happiness level. So you can stay in your high range of happiness by controlling your actions and not what you have.
• Hedonic adaptation: You can get used to almost anything, so even if it provides happiness at the beginning, it will tend to fade away as you no longer notice the things you adapt to.
• Self-determination theory: This discusses optimal motivation, and how all humans have three basic psychological needs: autonomy (doing what you choose), competence (doing it well) and relatedness (connecting with others while doing so).

Five Happiness Prescriptions

1. Change what you DO, not what you HAVE. Then VARY how you do it.

2. Pursue intrinsic goals for self-concordant reasons.

3. Try to be your unguarded self in social settings.

4. Balance time across the day.

5. Try to manage your life so you feel autonomous, competent and connected.

Wasn't that interesting?! The most difficult aspect of happiness is maintaining it, but using these strategies and positive hope, I think everyone could give it a try! Think about it...you have the rest of your life to live for others literally, such as spouses and children, so take now to do things intrinsically and not because friends want you to do them. Who wants to fake their true self in social situations? Nobody! So don't do it!

As I look at these, I wonder...which of these am I missing that is currently not contributing to my happiness? Probably some of the time suggestion, I have an over-necessity for the connectedness and autonomy, but small efforts can make a big change. And that applies to everything.

So...this post has the 'revelations' tag because I feel like I have learned a lot about the world/myself while writing it, one thing being, what makes me happy?

• Blogging
• Taking pictures
• Writing
• Connections with people/social interaction
• Planning and being in charge (Type A...)
• Being involved with things I find interesting (I saw an advertisement for a Latin Dancing group today...how awesome would that be?! I wish I had time to go to a meeting!)
• Exercising
• Advertising...for those of you who don't know, as an advertising representative for the Maneater student newspaper, I get incredibly excited when I conquer a new company and convince them to purchase advertising space. It's weird, I know.
• Beautiful places

So what am I going to do about it? Continue with intentional activities and maintain a happiness level! And in the future, I can combine all of these skills to start a party planning business within the next few years! And for now, I can balance my time and just be happy :)

Therefore, I hope you can apply these lessons to your lives too and sustain happiness. In the meantime, I'm going to try writing my blog in proper AP (Associated Press) Style for the duration of it in order to practice for my journalism courses, and hopefully being in nine hours of writing intensive courses will improve my writing skills. Have a great day!