Week 1: Introduction

Key Concepts

Measure your Baseline Happiness

Your first “assignment” is to measure your current level of happiness using one or two validated psychological surveys. These scores will serve as a “baseline” of your happiness level at the start of this experience. At the end of the course, you’ll redo the survey to see if your happiness and overall mood have changed after doing these positive practices for several weeks.

PERMA (an acronym for Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment— the basic dimensions of psychological flourishing). The questionnaire is 23 questions and once you submit your responses, you will receive scores ranging from 0-10 for each pillar along with scores for overall well-being, health, and negative emotions.

The Authentic Happiness Inventory is a validated, 24-question survey that measures overall well-being. At the end of the survey, you will receive a score between 1-5.

Find Your Signature Strengths

This week you will also have an opportunity to identify your Character Strengths, which we’ll learn more about in an upcoming lecture. To identify your Character Strengths, take the online test available on the VIA website.

Greatest Strengths:

Week 2: Misconceptions About Happiness

Key Concepts

What does not make us happy

Week 3: Why Our Expectations Are So Bad

Annoying Features of the Mind

  1. Our minds’ strongest intuitions are often totally wrong
  2. Our minds don’t think in terms of absolutes, our minds judge relative to reference points
  3. Our minds are built to get used to stuff
  4. We don’t realize that our minds are built to get used to stuff

Hedonic Adaptation

Impact Bias

Week 4: How Can We Overcome Our Biases

Rethink “Awesome Stuff”

Thwart Hedonic Adaptation

Reset Your Reference Points

Week 5: Stuff that Really Makes Us Happy

Better Wanting: Part 1

Signature Strengths (in a job rather than money)

Flow (in a job rather than Money)

Growth Mindset (rather than Good Grades)

Better Wanting: Part 2 & 3

Kindness

Social Connection

Time Affluence

Mind Control (via Meditation)

Healthy Practices - Exercise

Healthy Practices - Sleep

Rewirements

Week 2

Savoring

Savoring is the act of stepping outside of an experience to review and appreciate it. Often we fail to stay in the moment and really enjoy what we’re experiencing. Savoring intensifies and lengthens the positive emotions that come with doing something you love. For the next seven days, you will practice the art of savoring by picking one experience to truly savor each day. It could be a nice shower, a delicious meal, a great walk outside, or any experience that you really enjoy. When you take part in this savored experience, be sure to practice some common techniques that enhance savoring. These techniques include: sharing the experience with another person, thinking about how lucky you are to enjoy such an amazing moment, keeping a souvenir or photo of that activity, and making sure you stay in the present moment the entire time. Every night, make a note of what you savored (Note: you can make a list in a notebook, use a notes app on your phone, use a calendar, or whatever works for you!). When you do write things down at the end of the day, be sure to take a moment to remember the activity.

Daily Gratitude Journal

Gratitude is a positive emotional state in which one recognizes and appreciates what one has received in life. Research shows that taking time to experience gratitude can make you happier and even healthier. For the next seven days, you will take 5-10 minutes each night to write down five things for which you are grateful. They can be little things or big things. But you really have to focus on them and actually write them down (Again, try to develop a tracking method works for you and utilize a note on your phone, a daily calendar, a special notebook, etc). You can just write a word or short phrase, but as you write these things down, take a moment to be mindful of the things you’re writing about (e.g., imagine the person or thing you’re writing about, etc.). This exercise should take at least five minutes. Do this each night for the whole week.

Week 3

Random Acts of Kindness

Research shows that happy people are motivated to do kind things for others. Over the next seven days, you will perform seven acts of kindness beyond what you normally do. You can do one extra act of kindness per day, or you can do a few acts of kindness in a single day. These do not have to be over-the-top or time-intensive acts, but they should be something that really helps or impacts another person. For example, help your colleague with something, give a few dollars or some time to a cause you believe in, say something kind to a stranger, write a thank you note, give blood, and so on. At the end of each day, list your random act of kindness (You can make a list in a notebook, keep a running note on your phone, log in a daily planner, or whatever method works for you). Just make sure you’ve finished seven total new acts of kindness by the end of the week.

Make A Social Connection

Our social connections matter. Research shows that happy people spend more time with others and have a richer set of social connections than unhappy people. Studies even show that the simple act of talking to a stranger on the street can boost our mood more than we expect. Over the next seven days, you will try to focus on making one new social connection per day. It can be a small 5-minute act like sparking a conversation with someone on public transportation, asking a coworker about his/her day, or even chatting to the barista at a coffee shop. But you should also seek out more meaningful social connections too. At least once this week, take a whole hour to connect with someone you care about— a friend who’s far away or a family member you haven’t talked to in a while. The key is that you must the time needed to genuinely connect with another person. At the end of the day, list the social connection you made and notice how you feel when you jot it down. (Remember to keep track of your connections in your preferred rewirement tracking method).

Week 4

Let’s Get Physical

Research suggests that ~30 minutes a day of exercise can boost your mood in addition to making your body healthier. For the next week, you will spend each day getting your body moving with at least 30 minutes of exercise. Set aside a location and time (write it in your calendar!). Then hit the treadmill at the gym, do an online yoga class, or throw on some headphones and dance around your room to cheesy pop songs. This isn’t supposed to be a marathon-level of activity; it’s just to get your body moving a bit more than usual (Note: if you have physical limitations that prevent you from doing this weeks activity, do plan to skip it for obvious reasons). At the end of the day, make sure to log your activity. Be sure to take a moment to notice how much better you feel after getting some exercise in.

Sleep

One of the reasons we’re so unhappy in our modern lives is that we’re consistently sleep deprived. Research shows that sleep can improve your mood more than we often expect. For the next week, you must get at least seven hours of sleep for at least four nights of the next week. I know, I know. You’re super busy this week. There are deadlines to meet, friends to see, errands to run, etc. But sleep is going to make you feel better— both physically and mentally. So pick four nights this week, note them in your calendar, and get ready to get some much needed sleep. Also be sure to practice good sleep hygiene too— no devices before bed and try to avoid caffeine and alcohol on the days you’re getting your sleep on. Each morning, be sure to log your amount of sleep in the tracking method you’ve been using for the rewirements. Make sure you get four nights of 7+ hours over the course of the week.

Week 5

Meditate

Meditation is a practice of intentionally turning your attention away from distracting thoughts toward a single point of reference (e.g., the breath, bodily sensations, compassion, a specific thought, etc.). Research shows that meditation can have a number of positive benefits, including more positive moods, increased concentration, and more feelings of social connection. For the next week, you will spend each (at least) 10 minutes per day meditating. Find a quiet spot where you won’t be disturbed while you’re meditating. If you are new to meditation, you can try one of three guided meditations available on SoundCloud. And remember— meditation isn’t about the meditation itself; it’s about building a skill that we can use later. Lots of people find it hard at first, but stick with it and see if it allows you to feel a bit calmer over the course of the week. At the end of the day, log when and how long you meditated in your preferred tracking system.

Gratitude Letter/Visit

One of your last rewirements is one that research suggests will have a big impact on your happiness and that of another person. This week, write a letter of gratitude to someone you care about. For this assignment, think of one living person who has made a big difference in your life, but whom you never properly thanked. Then find a quiet spot when you have a half-hour free and write a heartfelt letter to that person explaining how he or she has touched your life and why he or she is meaningful to you. Your letter can be as long as you want, but try to make it at least 300 words or so. Then you must deliver that letter to the person in question. Just say you want to talk to that person without explaining why. You could read the letter to your chosen person over the phone or Skype, but for an extra huge happiness boost, we recommend scheduling a time to visit this person in person to share your letter. However you meet up, you should read the letter aloud. We also recommend that you both have some tissues handy for this one. A gratitude letter is one of the most powerful tool for increasing happiness because it can forge social bonds and really change someone’s life.

Week 10

Measure Your Happiness, Again

To see if this course (and doing the rewirements specifically) has helped you feel a little happier, we want to you retake your level of happiness using the same survey(s) you started with. You may have used the PERMA Profiler, the Authentic Happiness Inventory, or the 1-question happiness scale (“On a scale of 1-5, how happy are you with your life right now?”).

Also note, you may have taken the Authentic Happiness Survey and/or the PERMA Profiler on the University of Pennsylvania’s Authentic Happiness website depending on when your session started. You may log back in to that website to generate your scores or take the surveys embedded in the course here and here.

Keep track of your score and compare it to your baseline measure.