Happiness Week 4: Control vs Personal Responsibility

This fourth post in my series on happiness sums up week 4 of the study course I am following on http://www.coursera.org called A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment:  https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness
To see all the posts in this series go to http://lublenok.blogspot.com/search/label/ALHF

Week 4 of the course starts with the discussion of the topic of control seeking.

On the one hand, it turns out that people having control over one's life is a very important determinant of psychological and physical health and happiness!

Those with a greater desire for control:

1. Tend to aim higher in life
2. Tend to achieve more

On the other hand, we can't control everything all the time. 

Why being overly controlling of other people, lowers our happiness:

1. Others don't like to be controlled by us. It makes them unhappy, which lowers our own happiness.
2. It results in anger, frustration and disappointment when others don't behave the way we want them to
3. Decision-making suffers

Why being overly controlling of outcomes, lowers our happiness:

1. You are more likely to be frustrated when things don't turn out like you want them to
2. The quality of your decisions is likely to suffer: superstitions, risk-taking
3. If we obsess about outcomes, we are likely to sacrifice our health and our relationships

Antidote habit: Taking Personal Responsibility for your Happiness

It's about regulating our emotions and taking control of our feelings

Because our thoughts influence our feelings, we can regulate our feelings by controlling our thoughts

Anger is often preceded by thoughts that something is blocking us from achieving what we want

Sadness is often preceded by thoughts that something valuable is missing or lost

Anxiety is often preceded by thoughts or being uncertain or out of control

Pride is triggered when you attribute success to your actions or skills

Gratitude is triggered when you attribute success to somebody else's actions or luck

The higher the ability for internal control the lower the need for external control

Simple Emotion Regulation Strategies

1. Situation Selection
2. Labeling your emotions
3. Attention deployment
4. Cognitive reappraisal

Uncertainty and lack of control are important for enjoying life!

Leading a healthier life style:

1. Eat right
2. Move more
3. Sleep well

Remember self-compassion and common humanity

Happiness Week 3: To Be Loved vs To Love

This fourth post in my series on happiness sums up week 3 of the study course I am following on http://www.coursera.org called A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment:  https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness
To see all the posts in this series go to http://lublenok.blogspot.com/search/label/ALHF

This third week of the happiness course is about:

Deadly sin: the need to be loved or go it alone
Happiness habit: the need to love and give
Exercise: creative altruism

To be happy it's crucially important to have the feeling of belonging, of being loved.

Harlow's experiments with monkeys have shown, that need for love can even be more important than need for food. When the need for love is not provided, we tend to be psychologically damaged.

Another series of experiments shows that agreement with others makes us feel that we have a better chance of connecting with them.

Loneliness increases the chance of not only psychological problems, but also physical illnesses.

Being needy for love, however, is not good for happiness, for these reasons:

1. It makes you less attractive to others
2. It makes you less respected by others
3. It gets you into the wrong kind of relationships
4. You lose respect for yourself.

Being avoidant sounds alluring in theory:

1. It makes us feel independent and free
2. It sounds like the kind of thing a mentally strong person would do

Being avoidant isn't good for happiness either:

1. It goes against our (social) nature
2. Avoidants get less cooperation from other people 
3. Avoidants are less satisfied with the help they get from others
4. They have the lowest level of job satisfaction
5. They feel lonely and alienated

The right way to be is secure attachment (which is the middle ground between neediness and avoidance):

People become needy or avoidance because of the lack of love and attention as children, particularly in their first 1.5 years of life. But this can be changed! 

I, myself, am rather avoidant in many situations.

What you can do:

1. Practice self-compassion: being kind towards yourself, particularly when feeling unhappy
2. Practice gratitude: improving the quality of relationships that you have
3. Practice kindness and generosity, and thereby strengthen the need to love (and give)

Spending money on others makes us happier!

Wow, what a finding! I always tend to feel otherwise :)

Those donating to charity were are happier people.

Why being generous makes us happy?

1. We are hard-wired to be kind, loving and giving
2. It makes us feel more confident and capable
3. Reciprocity: when we are generous, others are likely to be generous in return

Ways to be kind and generous:

1. Being grateful
2. Doing good to others

Kind and generous people are more likely to succeed in their professions!

You want to be an "otherish" giver.

Reciprocity styles:

1. Giver: what do I have to offer?
2. Taker: what do you have to offer me?
3. Matcher: seeking justice, fairness and equity

Givers are more likely to succeed! Givers are able to harness a lot of extra resources! But they are also found a lot at the bottom (self-secrificing, burnouts, etc.)

Successful and unsuccessful givers are differentiated by the ability to attend not only to the needs of others but also to their own needs. Successful people are "otherish" givers:

1. They contain the cost of giving
1. Am I the right person?
2. Help multiple people at the same time
2. Value extending strategies
1. Allow themselves to feel gratitude, pride, etc.
2. Say No at times
3. See impact of your generosity
4. Have fun being generous

Creative altruism exercise:

The idea is to do something kind to somebody, which involves some cost to yourself, is fun for both parties, and then watch their reaction.

1. What was your idea/plan?

Give flowers to my wife.

2. How did you execute the idea? Did you stick to the "3 rules for giving" (contain cost of giving, have fun, and register impact)? If not, why not?

I went to the market, bought flowers for my wife, gave the flowers to her and watched her reaction.

3. What did the recipient feel? In answering this question focus on what the recipient said/did when he/she experienced your act.

She really loved it, she said so and gave me a big hug and kiss

4. How did it make you feel? What effect did the entire exercise have on you?

It made me feel very happy!

My current happiness level is 21 out of 35 :)

Happiness Week 2: Chasing Superiority vs Pursuing Flow

This third post in my series on happiness sums up week 2 of the study course I am following on http://www.coursera.org called A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment: https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness
To see all the posts in this series go to http://lublenok.blogspot.com/search/label/ALHF

Week 2 of the course discusses the second deadly happiness sin: Chasing Superiority and its counterpart habit of Pursuing Flow.

Chasing Superiority is about comparing oneself to other people as to how rich, beautiful, successful, famous, powerful we are, and wanting to be better than anybody else at one thing or another.

Reasons why we chase superiority:
1. To get others's approval
2. We feel good when we win
3. We feel we are progressing towards mastery
4. We have a greater sense of autonomy

Effects of chasing superiority on happiness:

Reasons why pursuit of superiority lowers happiness:

1. Social comparisons to others. There will always be people who are better than you, this leads to envy and separates us from others. Interestingly, we are most likely to feel envious when someone close to us does better than us on a dimension that's relevant to us.

2. Materialism. It is easier to compare oneself to others based on materialistic criteria (money, possessions, fame), rather than the dimensions that really matter (skills, talents, qualities), which are hard to gauge. And materialism makes us unhappy, because 1) it makes us lonely, separated from other people; 2) adaptation, meaning that satisfaction from materialistic possessions does not last long

3. Others like us less when we seek superiority. Because we become more self-centered and care less for others, and then others start caring less for us.

Yet many people think that: drive for superiority should lead to higher achievement, right? But this turns out not to be the case. It's been proven by various scientific experiments that higher incentive leads to worse performance when the task at hand requires conceptual, creative thinking!

The reasons for this counter-intuitive phenomenon is that the stress coming from the desire to perform takes away some of the brain's capacity, lowering productivity and performance at intellectual tasks. The pressure to perform may help to motivate us, but won't make us perform better and will lower our happiness level.

I personally have indeed a great desire and drive for superiority. And in many was now I recognize that it stands in the way of my performance, taking away vital energy needed to perform and making me worry about how others judge my work. But what's the alternative? The alternative turns out to be the experience of flow, something I have experienced on many occasions.

Flow makes us happy!

People are happiest when they do something meaningful. It also turns out that the common theme of people's meaningful experiences is: flow.

Characteristics of flow:

1. Distorted perception of time: Time seems to slow down, but when the flow experience is over, time seems to have passed really fast.
2. Lack of self-consciousness: you are so absorbed in the activity, that there is no excessive capacity left over to judge how you are doing.
3. Intense focus on the present moment: 

When does flow happen?

1. Flow happens in the border area between anxiety and boredom. When your current skill levels are slightly less than the skill levels required for the task at hand.
2. The quality of a flow experience is much higher when the skills level is high.

Why flow enhances happiness

1. Flow is enjoyable in the moment: flow experiences are meaningful, and people enjoy meaningful experiences. They also bring about new, creative, original ways of doing things.
2. Charisma: when in high flow, you become more charismatic and more likable by others. Flow is not a finite resource, and is even contagious. It's not a zero sum like money.
3. Flow leads to mastery

Why flow enhances success

Anyone at the top of their game in any field has experienced at least 10,000 hours of flow in their domain of expertise, which is roughly equivalent to 10 years. So rather than seeking superiority, you better think about how you are going to experience 10000 hours of flow-like states.

But how do we find out what to be a master at? As a kid, we seem to know what we want to be, but then we settle for a practical job that puts bread on the table. Practical job = a job in which our heart is not into it. We become automatons, doing jobs we don't find meaningful.

We can't be happy unless we experience flow on a regular basis, and we can't experience flow unless we do something meaningful, challenging and enjoyable.

How to get flow back into your life?

1. Find yourself a hobby. But you need to challenge yourself, because flow only happens when you stretch yourself.
2. Find flow at work by:
1. Identifying your talents and nurturing them. Bend your job, take more responsibility, etc.
2. Identifying what your community needs and find ways to meet those needs
3. Identifying what you enjoy doing: spend a couple of hours every week meeting people who do what you would like doing, experiment

Mitigating drive for superiority

Self-Compassion

People believe that they need a lot of criticism and negative self-talk to motivate themselves.

When things are going badly for us, what we need is self-compassion:

1. treating ourselves with the same kindness, care and concern as we would a good friend 
2. recognizing our common humanity, every time we fail, it is an opportunity to connect with others
3. mindfulness, being present with what is and accepting what is

Self-compassion is not the same thing as self-pity and self-indulgence.

How to practice self-compassion:

1. Talk to yourself as you would to a good friend if he were in your situation
2. Write yourself a compassionate letter

Gratitude

1. Expressing gratitude strengthens bonds and relationships
2. It forms a bridge between hubristic pride and connection
3. Makes you feel other-centered rather than self-centered
4. Helps you mitigate the need for superiority
5. Helps boost happiness in many ways

Assignment:

The assignment for this week was to write a gratitude letter to somebody who has been important in your life. I wrote and gave my letter to my wife Luda!

Happiness Week 1: Devaluing and prioritizing happiness

This post is second in a series devoted to the subject of happiness in conjunction with the study course I am following on http://www.coursera.org called A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment: https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness
To see all the posts in this series go to http://lublenok.blogspot.com/search/label/ALHF

So in my last post I gave my preliminary definition of happiness as I understand it now. Knowing what makes you happy is an important prerequisite for a happy life. I also introduced the balloon analogy and the concept of deadly happiness sins (things that deflate the happiness balloon) and happiness habits (things that inflate the balloon).

Today we'll talk about the first deadly sin and the habit which counteracts this sin. The sin consists in devaluing happiness and the habit is about prioritizing happiness without pursuing it.

Devaluing happiness is about sacrificing happiness for the sake of other things, making choices in life that are not conducive to our happiness. For example, people may value relationships and personal happiness over money, but they would often make choices that favor money over other things, like when choosing a better paying job over a more fulfilling one. When asked about what they would ask of a genie who can fulfill any desire, only 6% ask for happiness, while the top 3 items people ask for are: money, fame and success, and relationships. In many studies, people often prioritize value for many over what they like most. Or people favor being right over being happy.

So there is a paradox, which we shall call the fundamental happiness paradox, which is the tendency to sacrifice happiness for the sake of the other, less important goals. Few people will readily admit to this. On the one hand, we think happiness is important, yet we sacrifice happiness for other goals.

Why Do We Devalue Happiness?

Reason 1: Harboring negative beliefs about happiness: 
1) happiness leads to laziness (while the opposite is actually true),
2) happiness leads to selfishness (while the opposite is true),
3) happiness is fleeting

In fact, happiness has a lot of positive effect on us.

Reason 2: Failing to define happiness in concrete terms

Fluency effect: we tend to like something more when we understand it more easily.

Defining happiness was the first assignment for this course, which I did in my previous post.

Reason 3: Medium maximization: the tendency to chase the means to happiness (or other end goals) and to forget all about the end goals itself (e.g. happiness). This is about chasing money, status and fame, which are medium rather than happiness itself

The happiness habit to counteract devaluing happiness is: Prioritize but don't pursue happiness

- Remind yourself regularly about what you really want in life, especially when making choices
- On the other hand, we should not actively monitor or chase happiness, because if you do this you are likely to compare your current level of happiness to where you ideally want to be, which may actually have an adverse affect on you. It's like trying to fall asleep.

My Definition of Happiness

Note: I haven't been posting here for a long time, as I was writing mostly on Facebook, but I feel it's time to resume this blog to write things down in a more lasting and less fleeting medium than Facebook. So here it comes.

So this post and possibly even a series of posts is about happiness. I was triggered to write it as I started to follow this Coursera course on A Life of Happiness and Fulfillment: https://www.coursera.org/learn/happiness
To see all the posts in this series go to http://lublenok.blogspot.com/search/label/ALHF

By the way, this free online course of study, consisting of video lectures and assignments, is just starting, so please consider joining it if you feel like it (the course officially starts on December 21, so there is plenty of time to join). It even has English and Ukrainian subtitles!

Why I joined this course?

Well, happiness is probably what all people, including myself, strive for, be it consciously or unconsciously. Especially in these dark winter months, when I experience lower levels of energy and satisfaction, it is good to get a deeper understanding of happiness, how it works, what is conducive to happiness and what makes us unhappy, and all of this based on the latest scientific research.

A note of caution: It looks like most of the contributors to this course and researchers cited in it come from business schools and marketing departments. This makes me somewhat suspicious, as I generally distrust marketeers. But nonetheless I would like to give it a try :)

Week 1 of the course:

- Explains how the course came about: basically, the guy was teaching other classes in marketing and came up with the idea for this course and it became a great success with his students, so he decided to create a massive online open course (MOOC) on Coursera.
- Explains how happiness can be measured and concludes, based on scientific evidence, that people's self-assessment of how happy they feel is a pretty good measure of happiness and correlates well with other happiness indicators.
- Introduces a balloon metaphor: happiness is like a balloon! You pump it with good air and you feel lighter and uplifted. Or you make holes in it and you deflate and feel down.
- Introduces the idea of 7 Deadly Happiness Sins: these are the holes in the balloon, things that make us unhappy, the more of these sins we commit, the more holes we get, and the more frequently we commit them, the bigger the holes.
- Introduces the idea of 7 Happiness Habits: these are like pumps, the more pumps and the bigger pumps we have, the bigger our balloon gets, the more happy we are.
- Explains how the course will work: every week a new deadly happiness sin is introduced, then a happiness habit is brought in as antidote to the sin, and there are exercises to practice and strengthen the habit.

Definitions of Happiness

The assignment for week 1 is to come up with your own definition of happiness and what kind of things make you happy. The definition does not need to be perfect. It's just a starting point.

Some examples of how happiness can be defined are given such as:
- Happiness as sensory pleasure
- Happiness as hubristic pride (sense of arrogance, being better than others)
- Happiness as authentic pride (pride based on achievement)
- Happiness as love/connection
- Happiness as abundance (feeling that you have when you feel you have everything you need)
- Happiness as joy
- Happiness as a feeling of serenity
- Happiness as a feeling of interest (engagement, curiosity)
- Happiness as amusement/laughter

My definition of happiness

Here it comes, imperfect as it is:

To me happiness is associated with a profound feeling of interest in all kinds of things, curiosity, learning, problem solving, productive and creative activity, self-discipline, connecting with people on a deeper level, connecting with nature, seeing beauty in all kinds of phenomena, and a great sense of satisfaction, achievement, energy and joy that comes with all of this, but not when this is taken out of proportion when it becomes a perfectionist obsession at the expense of love, caring, compassion and other people.

I am quite competitive, so my trap is wanting to be better than others (hubristic pride), and indulging in too much learning, practice and other activities at the expense of other important pursuits, such as family, personal finances, caring about others, etc. Wanting to understand as much and as deep as possible, to learn about new things all the time, and striving for perfection sometimes makes me unhappy, because there are so many things to know and perfection seems so far away.

It is very likely that this definition will change as I proceed with this course, and I am curious what it will be by the end of the course in 6 weeks or so.

What makes me happy

The second part of the assignment is to identify what makes me happy, what evokes the feeling I call happiness:

- Getting-up early
- Learning, practicing what I learn
- Solving problems associated with what I learn or what I work on
- Reading, watching video's, talking to people about what I learn and what they learn
- Linking new knowledge to what I already know
- Creative, productive work at work (programming) and at home (writing)
- Appreciating beauty in all kinds of phenomena and making beautiful things
- Physical exercise in the open air (bicycling, soccer, running, table tennis)
- Reading good literature
- Singing
- Being with my daughter

My next post will be about the first deadly happiness sin (devaluing happiness) and the first happiness habit (prioritizing but not pursuing happiness).