Coursera - Science of well being course - Misconceptions about happiness

The "Science of Well-Being" course on Coursera is a highly popular and widely praised online course offered by Yale University. Taught by Dr. Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale, this course explores the science of happiness and well-being. It delves into various psychological and behavioral factors that influence our overall sense of well-being. It starts off with clearing some misconceptions about happiness such as happiness is just set genetically, so can't really be changed. However, according to studies our happiness set point breakdown is : 50% genetic, 10% life circumstances, and 40% our conscious actions and thoughts

It also discusses the annoying features of our mind which deters us from sustaining our happiness. Some of the annoying features are :

Annoying Feature #1 - Our minds’ strongest intuitions are often totally wrong. The fact is, that the mind is all the time delivering to us these intuitions about what's going to make us happy, what's correct, All those intuitions sometimes can be just wrong.

Annoying Feature #2 - In our minds, we don't think in terms of absolutes, we're constantly comparing ourselves to reference points, and we don't have control over what those reference points are, they just kind of pop in. We judge one's own salary/status/possessions/abilities/etc relative to those of other people.

Annoying Feature #3 - Our minds are built to get used to stuff.. This is called Hedonic adaptation. Hedonic adaptation is the process of becoming accustomed to a positive or negative stimulus such that the emotional effects of that stimulus are attenuated over time. In other words, the hedonic adaptation is the process of things becoming the “new normal”, so that the things that make you happy once, make you less happy over time.

Annoying Feature #4 - We don’t realise that our mind is capable of hedonic adaptation. In addition, the following also makes it difficult to sustain happiness over time.

Impact bias : According to Tim Wilson and Dan Gilbert, who coined the term, miswanting - “the act of being mistaken about what and how much you will like something in the future”, our minds are miswanting all the time. This leads to the tendency to mispredicting how positive or negative issues will affect our lives.

Focalism : The tendency to think just about one event and forget about the other things that happen Immune Neglect : We forget how resilient we really are, of our "psychological immune system" and our tendency to adapt and cope with negative events.

Understanding the way our mind works give a certain insight into why we do things which we do. With this understanding, we can discuss how to be resilient with our happiness in the next blog.

Until next time, stay safe kids!