What Science Says about Becoming Happier, a Presentation

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I recently completed two courses on the science of happiness. The first was the Science of Well-being course from Yale, on Coursera, offered by Professor Laurie Santos. The second was the Science of Happiness offered by the UC Berkeley on their edX platform. From those two courses that were fairly complementary, I have put together a presentation not just on the science of happiness, but what it says to help you become happier, that summarizes the content of the courses, for which there was plenty! Links on the side of each slide lets you access much more information than the practical aspects I touch upon for this to be useful. While the courses are about the science of happiness, their content is geared towards making the learner happier, and that is lens through which I am presenting it. The science on its own isn’t terribly great if you don’t or can’t use it for something good, right?

Below is the presentation in 3 formats, pending how you want to view them.

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I’m Boycotting Ontario after Fordie Boy’s Election Win Tonight. Will You?

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Doug Ford, aka Fordie (Ford D.) Boy, has won an overwhelming majority government in Ontario tonight, even if with just 40% of the vote. It’s almost too strategically well spread out to believe, but it is what it is. I don’t know what you’re thinking, 40% of Ontarians who voted, but consequences for you will be consequences.

For my part, living in Canada outside of Ontario, your election results basically just cost you any economic contribution I might have consciously made until you elect someone else who is less elitist and less corrupt in every way imaginable. That’s my reaction to the fiasco. It’s not much, of course, me just being one person, but helping the world is about doing what you can do. If more people had turned out to vote, for instance, in what was among the lowest voter turnouts ever, things might have been different. But hey, my little personal boycott is the least of your worries in Ontario now cause I think most people who voted for Doug Ford will eventually come to regret it. Only time will tell.

Until then, for my part, there’ll be no vacations to Ontario for me until your government changes. I’ll avoid even flying through Toronto or other Ontarian airports unless there were a major inconvenience. I will insist friends where meet me elsewhere for when we do meet, cause they’ll be able to use the break, as well. Of course, I can’t avoid everything, like how certain things ship from Ontario warehouses that I wouldn’t even know about until afterward, or don’t have a choice to buy from another place. However, if I know I have a choice elsewhere, you can bet I will pick it.

Little boycott, sure. But what if a whole bunch of other people did it?

My Answer for 10 Quick Questions. What are Yours?

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Tonight, I found out about a very inspirational Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) series called Player’s Own Voice, where athletes, or those involved with athletics, talk in-depth about something grouped by these topics:

In each article of many, is a feature called 10 Quick Questions, where the interviewee is asked the 10 questions below for quick answers, rather than deep thought and recollection, with chance to revise before submitting. These are a pretty good collection of questions to give a fair representation of someone’s mind, unlike a lot of stupid quizzes you see these days!

  • The best book you’ve ever read?
  • Must-listen Podcast?
  • Best advice you ever received?
  • If your life was a movie, what would it be called?
  • What word or phrase do you overuse?
  • What is a skill you wish you had?
  • What’s something no one would guess about you?
  • If you could have the ultimate influential dinner party, who are the six people you’d invite?
  • What makes you cry, every time?
  • What’s the next goal you want to accomplish?

I LOVE this sort of stuff, much more for being able to get a strategically random glimpse into someone’s mind rather than to contemplate my answers. However, for the experience, I put myself through it. My answers are below but I’d LOVE to know yours if you were so kind as to share in the comments, or on your own blog with a link to this post for me to know.

If you answer those 10 questions in any way, publicly or not, please do it before you read my answers because no matter whose answers you read before doing something like this, they are bound to influence your answers in some way. The influence might be to steer you down a different thought path you might not have taken independently, rather than agreeing with some answers to incorporate into yours, but it’d still be influence. Thank you.

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From MY Vocabulary: Mamarazzi

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Most people know the term paparazzi in English. They are are independent photographers who take pictures of high-profile people, such as athletes, entertainers, politicians, and other celebrities, typically while subjects go about their usual life routines, often with intent to sell their photographs to media outlets focusing on tabloid journalism and sensationalism, such as gossip magazines [paraphrased from Wikipedia].

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My Bed Time Alarm (Final Assignment for Science of Well-Being Course

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The final assignment for the Science of Well-being course required students to try and develop a week long rewirement assignment into a habit over 4 weeks, then write about it. This need not be a daily habit, as that might take about 3 months from other research, but something done at least periodically each week. The quest for habit development is so that it becomes second nature. Consciously pursuing happiness all the time will drive you crazy, or at least neurotic, as other research has shown that was not mentioned in this course. I confirmed my thoughts on this from content in the free, 10-week course on the Science of Happiness offered by the UC Berkeley on their edX platform that is much more in-depth than this one, but may not as good as this Science of Well-being course for those just wanting a practical overview of the subject matter.

Below is the assignment I submitted. The Bed Time Alarm idea was described briefly in a previous post that talked about the handful of other rewirements I have actually embraced into my life as habits. I had been doing some of them already, or didn’t find them hard to embrace. However, there is a lot more details here, including rationale and measurements, which all good goals should contain to determine progress and/or success.

With this assignment, I have finally completed the course… and happier for it! Yay!

I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND this course to anybody who cares about their happiness and wants to become happier. A slightly more detailed review is here, plus you can view my posts about the course to see what else was done and how it impacted me, along with other thoughts.

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