I spent 10 weeks on Yale’s most anticipated course on Happiness - “The Science of Well-being” 👇

Here are 15 highlights! P.s. 13th is my favorite 👇 1/ We control only 40% Roughly 50 % of happiness is determined by genes (i.e., totally out of your control), roughly 10 percent is determined by circumstances (i.e., somewhat out of your control) and the final 40 percent is determined by your thoughts, actions and attitudes. 2/ More money doesn't make us happier! Reported well-being rises with income until you hit $75,000, at which point it levels off once our basic needs are met. Beyond that, there’s no increase in happiness with higher income. 3/ Poison of Comparison People make themselves miserably envious by comparing their full lives to their friends' curated lives on social media. 4/ Experiences vs. Possessions You're happier if you spend money on experiences rather than stuff. A possible explanation is the endurance of experiences in people’s memories, while the perceived value of material goods weakens over time. 5/ Hedonic Adaptation Over time, we get used to any new situation, whether it be a horrific accident, a lottery win, a new car, or finding true love. Give it a few months and happiness returns to baseline. 6/ Big Four Four of the best ways to rewire your brain towards happiness are diet, meditation, sleep and exercise! 7/ Eight Minutes of Gratitude Spend just eight minutes a week replaying happy memories, remembering exactly how you felt in those moments. This simple act has been shown to have positive emotional effects even weeks later. 8/ Parallel Universe Write about how you might never have met your partner or your best friend, or how you nearly missed something else that really defines you. How might things be worse if you hadn't gotten into that college, or found that job? 9/ Negative Visualization Pretend this was your last day — not necessarily your last day of life, but your last day of school, your last day in this job, your last day with your loved ones. You'd probably get pretty wistful, right ? Think about what you would say. 10/ Delayed Gratification Split up awesome things. There's a reason why people rate their enjoyment of TV shows higher if they're split up by commercials and it's not about the quality of the ads. It's that breaking up the good times helps us appreciate them more. 11/ Power of Socialization Our brains are particularly terrible at predicting the effects of social interactions on our happiness. We're happier when we make plans with other people, we're more resilient and effective when we make pledges to or seek help from others, 12/ WOOP It’s a five-minute mental restructuring that you can use to tackle any problem. It stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacles, Plan. WOOP adherents find it particularly useful for tasks they’ve been avoiding for so long that they're having anxiety and don't know where to begin. 13/ Random Acts of Kindness Next time when buying your drink at Starbucks, maybe throw in another five bucks for the order of the next person in the socially distant line. You may not believe it, but such a random act of charity will lift your mood more than the caffeine. 14/ Synthetic Happiness Whether people hit the jackpot or end up in a wheelchair for life, most of the test subjects returned to their baseline levels of happiness after three months. Happiness is like a leaky tire. You've just got to keep reinflating it. 15/ Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Challenging activities give us what positive psychologists call flow. Flow is the state where we're feeling really present and involved and it's kind of hard, but doable. Recap: - We control 40% of our happiness. - Our baseline does not increase drastically after we hit $75,000 annual mark. - Hedonic adaptation is typical to everybody, whether you are a lottery winner or accident survivor. - Happy people devote time to family and friends, practice gratitude, practice optimism, engage in physical activities, donate to charity, appreciate life’s gifts and strive to live in the present moment while seeking “flow”✨