Becoming happier, Part 1

I started taking this course a week ago, and it's been really cool. It has to do with the psychology of well-being -- both the science showing what makes us happy, and how to actually use this information for personal benefit.

One assignment of the course is to do "rewirings" -- activities designed to rewire your habits to increase your overall well-bring. An important part of the rewirings is to write down what you do. At first, I had mixed feelings about broadcasting my rewirings online, for the same reason I have mixed feelings about posting anything on social media: I can't escape the feeling that, as soon as it's shared, the purity of the intention becomes diluted by self-aggrandizement and exhibitionism. (I've refrained from posting many things for this reason.) On the other hand, if this post inspires even one person to do a rewiring, or even take the course, it will have been worthwhile.

Rewiring #1: Using character strengths

The first rewiring was to take a character strengths survey and use my top strengths, the idea being that it feels good to do stuff I'm good at. My top three strengths were love, humor, and gratitude.

These strengths have changed over time; if I'd taken this survey just a year ago, I'd definitely have gotten different results. I credit my current strengths to my wonderful friend group, mindfulness meditation practice, and the simple passing of time. Time is one of love's greatest allies.

 For love, I expressed my admiration for a few of my friends this week. I called my mom and talked with her about my and her plans for the future. I called my brother and planned to watch the new Avengers movie with him (which he is very excited about). I had an intimate conversation with a friend while stargazing. I wrote a poem for myself and posted it on this blog. I enrolled in a science of well-being course to become happier.
"Love" is quite a loaded term in modern society, to both good and ill effect. When people say "love", they usually mean romantic love, which is something I've been guilty of. But that's a shame, because familial love, friendly love, and self-love are just as important, if not more. I want to be more conscientious about these other types of love in my life.
I had an profound conversation with a friend about love recently. I was unsatisfied with the common saying, "everyone deserves love". What does it mean to deserve something? If something is universally deserved, doesn't that cheapen its value? And aren't there people so vile and despicable that they don't deserve love? His response was compelling: Given how beautiful and transcendent love is, it is the most heartbreaking thing in the world that some people don't get to experience it. This conversation really clarified the nature of love for me.
On one hand, I want love to be a big, meaningful word, the kind of word that can be the climax of a movie, the kind of word that lingers on a mind for a year after it's spoken. On the other hand, I want love to be a common, natural term, the kind of term that men can say from without the umbra of toxic masculinity, the kind of term that a woman can say without feeling overly vulnerable. The great thing is, it can be both. Love is not slave to dichotomy.

For humor, have you met me? I'm constantly joking. Sometimes I joke around too much. I did rewatch Brian Regan's excellent standup routine, but I didn't otherwise go out of my Wei to use this strength. I also won't be analyzing humor, as I think it often defeats the purpose (as this article hilariously lampoons). Humor is something that comes naturally to me, and I'm grateful for that. Speaking of which...

For gratitude, I started a gratitude journal, which is Rewiring #3 on this list. Gratitude and love are similar in nature, but you can read more about gratitude specifically in Rewiring #3.

Rewiring #2: Savoring an experience

We often dwell on negative experiences, to our detriment. Savoring positive experiences is the opposite. Mindfully enriching and intensifying a happy moment, in the moment, is an obvious (yet underused) method to increase well-being.

I did a mindful eating meditation via the Simple Habit app, and it was phenomenal. I was reminded of how delicious water is: The texture is crisp when it first hits your tongue, but then it rolls around your mouth with perfect, gentle smoothness. The taste is amazingly pure, bright, and refreshing. I repeated the meditation while eating chicken nuggets -- not exactly a meal to write home about -- and experienced a veritable explosion of flavors and textures. I recommend mindful eating to everyone.

I savored reading the book Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari. I enjoyed running the glossy pages through my fingers and feeling the weighty hardback cover in my hands. I took note of his brilliant writing style, which manages to communicate difficult concepts in simple prose -- the ultimate goal of writers working in this genre. Every couple of pages contained another fascinating, novel idea, and it was satisfying to wrestle with them and discuss them with others.

I savored walking. I took great pleasure in seeing my destination far away, only to arrive at it moments later by doing nothing other than putting one foot ahead of the other, repeatedly, in tiny increments. I noticed how my foot hit the ground with the perfect amount of pressure, whereupon the foot behind it immediately rose into the air with quiet ease. I enjoyed how my feet navigated the terrain even while I didn't so much as glance at them. I wiggled my toes around in the comfortable fabric of my socks. I relished the feel of springy grass and durable concrete alike as the sole of my shoe met them.

Rewiring #3: Gratitude journal

Gratitude was already one of my character strengths, so this tied in nicely with Rewiring #1. But damn, do I love gratitude. It's one of the most positive, selfless emotions on the wide spectrum of human experience. This is the same reason why the idea behind Thanksgiving is so appealing to me: In a cavalcade of other holidays drowning in consumerism and excess, a day dedicated to simply giving thanks is refreshing.

I feel and express the emotion of gratitude often, but writing down what I'm grateful for adds another dimension to the experience. Psychologists have shown that keeping a gratitude journal can have unexpectedly long-lasting and resonant effects on our well-being. Here are some entries from my personal gratitude journal.

I often express gratitude toward my friends and education, but there are so many other things to be thankful for. One of these is my body, which somehow knows how to produce the right amount of insulin, red blood cells, and stomach acid through processes that mystify me. Similarly, the dexterity of my hands amazes me. Even as I type these words, I am astonished at how effortlessly they glide across the keyboard. I am lucky to be able to feel, taste, smell, see, and hear the world; many people lack these privileges.

I am thankful for temperature control in buildings. I recently heard an interesting perspective: mere centuries ago, even the richest kings, as they lounged in their opulent palaces, had to deal with their water pitchers freezing over during winter. In modern times, "a roof over my head" is more than protection from the rain; it's a level of comfort someone who lived 200 years ago could not even fathom.

I am thankful for the countless strangers in my life abiding by implicit societal norms: Obeying traffic laws, holding doors open, being respectful of personal space. I tacitly benefit from untold centuries of conventions designed to smooth over interaction on every level, from interpersonal to intercontinental. It's a miracle that my mind can navigate this labyrinth of unspoken rules without conscious thought.

Conclusion

A big theme of the course is how bad we are at recognizing what makes us happy -- and even when we do recognize it, we are bad at actualizing the knowledge. It's one thing to understand that using our strengths, savoring experiences, and recording our gratitude will have positive impact on our lives, but another thing entirely to actually do these things. I hope reading my personal rewirings has convinced you to do some yourself.

Part 2