More than 3 million people have taken Yale’s insanely popular course on happiness — and it can make you happier, too.
tl;dr: Coursera is offering The Science of Well-Being for free during Black Friday (normally $49). Click here to redeem the course for 100% off! This deal expires on Friday, December 4th, 2020.
2020 was a crazy year for everyone, and we all hope that 2021 holds a much more positive beat. With quarantine lockdowns and covid-19 still on the rise, there’s never been a more important time to focus on mental health and happiness than now. Luckily, Yale’s most popular course The Science of Well-Being taught by Professor Laurie Santos is available online and can easily be taken from the comfort of your own home at any time.
This course is the online equivalent of Yale’s most popular on-campus course Psych 157: Psychology and the Good Life. With more than 3 million students enrolled in the online version, the course aims to teach students how to increase their own happiness and build productive habits. Professor Santos also discusses common misconceptions about happiness and our own biases that result in bad expectations.
We took The Science of Well-Being to see what the hype was all about and highly recommend the course for anybody who needs a life reset after such an exhausting year.
Common Misconceptions of Happiness
The G.I. Joe Fallacy
The course starts off with the G.I. Joe Fallacy — the mistaken idea that “knowing is half the battle.” Knowing something isn’t enough to change your behavior. Recognition that you are not happy is not enough to change your lack of happiness. Instead, we must take physical action towards making a positive change in our everyday lives.
Is Happiness Genetic?
Although roughly 50% of our happiness levels can be attributed to genetics, there are actions we can do to become happier. There is a misconception that we can’t learn how to be happier. According to research conducted by Sonja Lyubomirsky¹, about 40% of a person’s overall happiness level can be attributed to a person’s thoughts and actions.
Career, Money & Happiness
Given societal pressures to become successful, most humans set goals to become rich through a lucrative career that will allow them to live a happier life. However, it turns out that most of the goals we think will make us happier don’t really make us happy. Sometimes, our mind’s strongest intuitions are factually incorrect. The course goes into great detail on some of life’s biggest questions like “Can money buy happiness?” and how our own biases can negatively impact our expectations of happiness.
Does money really make us happier?
In a study conducted by Ed Diener², the correlation between income and life satisfaction is close to 0.1, so income doesn’t have much impact on happiness on average. Once an individual achieves a certain level of income that meets his or her basic needs, there are temporary and marginal returns on happiness.
Do our biases result in bad expectations?
Our minds typically judge relative to a reference point. In the photo above that displays the Muller Lyer Illusion, we don’t see the horizontal lines as the same size due to the arrows on the ends. Humans do this all of the time, such as when an athlete is disappointed to have only received the silver medal in the Olympics while another athlete right next to him or her is super happy to have received the bronze medal. Instead of appreciating our existing situation, we are constantly disappointed in our salaries, job titles, and other life goals.
How To Create Happiness
The Science of Well-Being provides several actions, or “rewirements,” you can take to improve your happiness. In the course, you’ll have six full weeks to practice these rewirements and build them as habits in your daily life. At the start and end of the course, you will take a survey that measures changes in your happiness levels. There are a lot more studies, research, and tips, but we’ve expressed our favorites below.
- Savoring: Step outside of your everyday experiences to review and appreciate them while they happen.
- Random Acts of Kindness: Surprise a co-worker with a freshly baked good, or thank someone for something they did recently that made your day better in a small or big way.
- Make A Social Connection: Try reconnecting with an old friend, someone who lives far away from you, or try making a new friend.
- Exercise & Sleep: Both of these have endless benefits besides increasing happiness. Go for a walk once this week, disconnect from technology, and look around. See what it’s like to get 8 hours of sleep every night, regardless of how busy you might be.
Did The Course Make Us Happier?
Yes! Taking The Science of Well-Being was a great refresh from our daily lives at Daily Learner. We shared a bit of what we learned, but our review only touches the surface. In the ten-week course, we learned about the vast research that has been conducted on happiness and how we can apply it to our daily lives. The last six weeks of the course are spent applying what we learned to our everyday lives through rewirements. Taking the course forces you to truly take action and make a positive shift in your life’s happiness. Don’t just read our review; make sure to enroll and take action in your own life!
Have Any Pro Tips on Happiness?
Comment below or get in touch with our team at dailylearnerteam@gmail.com! Let us know how you plan to grow your happiness this year.
Sources
- Lyubomirsky (2007). The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York, NY: Penguin Books. Page 44.
- Diener (2008). Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
