The Science of well being
❌ Knowing is half the battle! ——GI Joe.
Knowing something is not enough to really change how you actually think about it, and how you actually behave. If we really want to change our behavior, we have to change habits.
Action Tips
try your best to have a growth mindset. Think of this rewirement challenge as a learning experience and focus on your progress. Changing behaviors is hard but with a bit of effort and dedication you can improve your outcomes.
- using your strength, savoring experience, keeping a gratitude journal, connecting to others, performing kindness to others, exercising and sleeping more,meditation, and writing a gratitude letter.
- Signature Strengths - using your top character strengths in new ways
- Savoring - taking time to savor the things you enjoy
- Gratitude - (List and/or Letter) - expressing gratitude for the people and things in your life
- Kindness - increasing your acts of kindness
- Social Connection - making connections with strangers and acquaintances along with scheduling time for the people in your life
- Exercise - increasing your physical activity to at least 30 minutes a few times a week
- Sleep - making sure you sleep at least 7 hours a night several times a week
- Meditation - meditating for 5-10 minutes if you are a beginner or increasing your time in meditation if you already meditate regularly
- think about your rewirement
- Which rewirement did you pick and why?
- Did you socially commit to the rewirement?
- Did you utilize situation support or goal setting strategies?
- How many times you did you PLAN to do the rewirement and how many times did you ACTUALLY do it? How did you track your progress?
- Did your happiness score change over time?
- How was the overall experience for you?
- obstacle
- make a plan! think about how many times you will do your rewirement, when will you do it, where will you do it, who will you do it with? Have concrete answers to these questions will help you stick to your plan.
- socially commit your rewirement
- design your environment to set yourself up for success. Take a moment to consider situation support and brainstorm ways to promote good environments and fix bad environments.
Rewirements(track & retro)
Measure your happiness and discover your strength
Savoring
what is savoring?
The simple act of stepping out of your experience to review it. and really appreciate it while it's happening.
Why we should we take time to savor?
- savoring can thwart hedenic adaptation.(It can make us remember the good stuff in life)
- savoring can help thwart mind wandering.(It keeps us in the moment)
- savoring can help us increase gratitude.(It can make us thankful for the experiences we're having as we're having them.)
How do we make the most of the savoring activity?
- take part in a positive experience, and you have to savor during that experience.
- take a second to realize why it makes you happy.
gratitude
why gratitude
- the simple act of experiencing gratitude has a host of positive benefits.
- experiencing gratitude can increase your mood and lower your stress levels.
- It can even strengthen your immune system and low your blood pressure.
- It also can make you feel a stronger social connection which itself has this whole host of positive benefits.
how do we make the most of the gratitude activity?
- new: just start by writing things down that you are grateful for.
- take a moment to try to experience the gratitude you're thinking about.
- as usual, do it over time.
Our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstance in which we find ourselves. —— Sonja Lyubomirsky
percentage of your happiness is due to
- genetic 50%
- life circumstance 10%
- thoughts and action ( under control ) 40%
Kindness and social connect
remember kind things that you did.
remember kind things that other people have done for you.
less vulnerable to premature death
more likely to survive fatal illnesses
less likely to fall prey to stressful events
Random acts of kindness
list your random act of kindness, just make sure you've finished seven total new acts of kindness by the end of the week. You should perform seven acts of kindness beyond what you normally do. eg:
- help 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
- ……
make a social connect
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. at an end of the day, list the social connection you made and notice how you feel when you jot it down.
The key is that you make the time needed to genuinely connect with other people.
Misconception about happiness
Most of the goals we think are going to make us happy, don't really make us happy.
- our minds the strongest intuitions are often wrong.
- The comparison of Predicted emotions to Actual emotions after receiving bad news like getting a bad grade or getting turned down for a job offer:
- Predicted: Super Sad 😭
- Actual: Neutral 😐
- our minds are built to get used to stuff.
- we don't realize that our minds are built to get used to stuff.
【miswanting】 Most of the things we think make us happy don't make us as happy as we think.
These things that you think are going to make you very happy, or not actually going to make you very happy at all, such as
- good job
- lots of money
- awesome stuff
- true love
- the perfect body
- the perfect grades
- ……
why our expectation are so bad?
a salient (but often irrelevant) standard against which all subsequent information is compared.
reference point: our minds don't think in terms of absolutes, our minds judge to relative reference points.
we don't realize that our minds are built to get used to stuff.
how can we overcome our biases
rethink "Awesome stuff"
- think about new things in your life is don't invest in stuff, invest instead in things that are not going to stick around, namely experiences.
- going on vacation
- spending some time in an awesome art gallery
- going to Europe to check out the wonderful paintings there
- going to a concert
- even something short: going out to eat, or enjoying a delicious dessert
that experiences are less susceptible to social comparison.
Thwart Hedonic adaption
- savoring : focus
- 8 minutes pre day * 3 ( 24 minutes per week), think about something that really make you feel happiness. (对主观幸福感有着重大影响)
negative visualization
make this day your last
gratitude : thankful
- writing down 5 things that you're grateful for.
reset your reference points
- concretely re-experience
- concretely observe
- avoid social comparisons
- using stop technique
- thinking about what you are grateful
- telling yourself that you are better than other people.
- Being conscious of the reference points you're letting in.
- interrupt your consumption
- pausing and coming back to good experiences later.
- variety is the spice of life
- just doing things a little bit more variably, can actually increase our happiness a lot.
close friends strong family ties romantic ties
mind control
- meditation
putting strategies into practice
- use stupid phone(这个观点真的是与极简数字主义不谋而合)
- I'm much more willing to just talk to people.(Everybody's got an interesting story to tell.)
- gratitude other people.
- Time Affluence: value time more than money
- mind control: meditation
- exercise: 3/week for 30 minutes.
- sleep
Remember that the growth mindset is the belief that intelligence can be trained and that most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work.
Situation Support
Goal Setting
- Goal specificity: Knowing what the goal is => who what where when
- Positive visualize: the best overcome and potential obstacle
- Goal planning => if…… then ……
Wish: what's the most important thing that you really want to do. Outcome visualizing: positive and great. Obstacle: the obstacle that might block you. Plan: how you should do to resolve all problem? if XXX, then XXX. always keep an obvious purpose and plan.