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In my goals for 2021 post, I mentioned that I had started doing a Yale course, called 'The Science of Wellbeing', at the end of December. This is their most popular course, and it's taught by Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology and cognitive science. I completed that course last weekend, and wrote my final assignment for it. This week's post is a blog friendly adaptation of that assignment, as I think it demonstrates how much I learnt from the course, and how it massively boosted my happiness.
I hope you enjoy! ☺
I chose 'increasing my acts of kindness', as my rewirement, (final challenge in the course where you choose one of the tasks to do for an entire month, instead of just one week!) because one of my signature strengths, (signature strengths are your innate strengths - knowing them is useful because you can then aim to do jobs/hobbies which use your strengths, to lead you to a more fulfilled life! - you can do the signature strengths quiz here), is 'kindness', so I felt that it was a good habit to work on, and it's a lovely default to be kind to those around me.
When I first started the course, someone had just very unexpectedly ended their friendship with me and that experience hurt me a lot, so I knew even more that I wanted to treat people with kindness. I also loved learning in lectures that being kind to other people makes us happier, so that was a nice bonus!
I thought that the behaviour would fit into my life as I was in lockdown throughout the entirety of the course, and luckily I live with my partner, so it was good to be especially kind to him every day. I did this by setting a reminder on my phone as a repeating event for 4 weeks, so everyday it would say 'act of kindness' on my to-do list, and because I've been using my phone's calendar as a to-do list for multiple years now, I'm in the habit of checking off the items on the list, so I knew this would help me to get it done.
I socially committed, (telling people about your goals is proven to help you stick to them!), to the rewirement by talking to my partner about it - he knew that increasing my acts of kindness was the rewirement that I was working on, so he would sometimes remind me of the kind things I did for him that day, if I didn't feel like I had done anything worthy of logging in my notes app. I also wrote about it on my beauty and lifestyle blog, so I knew that my readers would hold me accountable if I didn't mention it ever again! I was aiming to accomplish feeling both happier in myself and closer to him, as he was the only person that I could physically see, and be kind to, during lockdown.
I used the WOOP framework, (I discussed this in detail in this post), to help me understand why I wanted to choose this rewirement, and how I thought I could make it a more regular thing, past the 4 weeks, and beyond the end of the course.
WOOP: Wish: To do at least one act of kindness every day.
Outcome: This will make me feel happier, as research shows that being kind to others activates the area of the brain called the striatum, which is also activated by us eating delicious foods that we love.
Obstacle: Sometimes this will be hard, especially when I am no longer unemployed, and my days become busier.
Plan: If this happens, then I will, (If/Then plan developed by Peter Gollwitzer), experiment with being kind in ways I haven't yet. The only person I am physically seeing at the moment is Stephen, but depending on what this life throws at me job wise, there will be more ways, and more people to be kind to. Maybe I'll let someone cut in front of me at the store, or pay it forward to someone behind me in Costa. I'll see it as an opportunity, instead of a challenge.
I completed this activity every single day for 4 weeks (28 days), and I used the notes app in my phone to log when I was kind, and I did this once a day. I found that some days, I almost forgot to do/log an act of kindness, but because I was also using the repeating event 'act of kindness' on my phone, I saw it on my to-do list everyday, so it was easier for me to remember - by the end of week 3, it became habitual and I was doing more kind things daily - sometimes more than one a day because it had become a habit, which is really nice.
My scores changed massively, and I'm so happy about it! My overall PERMA score, (you can take this quiz here), went from 8.38 to 9.8, which is so incredible. I was particularly fascinated with the fact that my 'negative emotions' decreased from 7.33 to 2.3 - I could shout from the rooftops about that. My 'loneliness' score also went from a 6 to a zero, which is crazy. I'm really happy with the progress I've made.
The experience of building a new habit was a lot of fun for me - especially because I knew that kindness was one of my signature strengths, it spurred me on to want to engage in it more, so it was really fun! There was one day where I almost forgot to do my act of kindness, even with the fact that I had seen it on my to-do list daily, but I have to physically open my calendar to look at my to-do list, as I don't set reminders for the items on my list, so I would recommend doing that if you feel like you'd need to!
I found that over time, I was able to do more acts of kindness a day - but chose to only log one or two of them, to not take up too much time with the logging, to allow more time for actually doing them.
I feel amazed that my happiness score was improved so much just from doing simple things like making my partner a coffee in the morning, giving him the last chicken dipper, or buying him a new phone case because I saw one he would like (this one was cool too, because I know that the research says that spending money on others instead of ourselves makes us happier - and it's true!).
I've also had friends' birthdays come up during this month and I've tried to purchase gifts which would thwart hedonic adaptation, (we get used to things and then they don't bring us happiness anymore - I spoke in detail about this in this post), such as 'scratch off movie posters' etc, so that friends could watch the movies with their families during lockdown - so it becomes more of an experience gift - it felt kind to use my knowledge I learnt from the course to gift my friends things which would ultimately make them happier, so that was really great! I loved the experience, and I'm excited because it doesn't end here - I've committed to doing a daily act of kindness for the entirety of 2021!
Some more fun things I learnt either from the course, or Derren Brown's book 'Happy', which discusses similar things!
There's something called 'miswanting' which means that we want the wrong things, because we think they'll make us happier, e.g. a job with a higher salary, however research shows that once we hit a certain amount (around £54,000), our happiness actually peaks, and earning any more than that, doesn't continue to make us happier.
However, we do indirectly find happiness in the absence of financial worry and stress, not so much from the presence of more money.
Our brains like stories - we'd rather experience something painful for longer as long as it ends well. If something goes really well for us but ends terribly, we just remember the ending, and remember it as a negative experience overall - how crazy is that?!
We need to remember that everything we now have is something we once desired, so instead of desiring new things to add to our lives, we should take a step back to recognise and appreciate the things we once wanted and now have.
And that's all I have for today - let me know if you learnt something! ☺
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