The quest for happiness is a seemingly endless human mission. Growing up there were Teen magazine quizzes to help you find out if your crush likes you or which lip color best suited your personality. Finding out how to be happier though? That was a question that no one quiz could point you to.
As we grew older, we were delivered career aptitude tests, personality tests, love language tests - all an attempt to effectively navigate the path to happiness and fulfillment. A million little ways to try to understand ourselves; paths to follow that would lead to the best life.
Perhaps these tests were on to something. Could there actually be a science to happiness? One Yale professor seems to believe so, thus developing 'The Science of Well Being'. The idea is that by diving into the fundamental drivers of happiness and fulfillment, we can each practice living happier lives. This class by the way? It just so happens to be the all-time most popular course at Yale and when I saw it was being offered for free on Coursera, I simply couldn't refuse.
Step one in the quest for living a happier, more fulfilling life? Being mindful about tapping into your character strengths.
UNDERSTANDING AND UTILIZING YOUR CHARACTER STRENGTHS
To learn how to be happier, we must learn what drives us as individuals. By focusing on where we excel, we can incorporate activities into our lives to help flood the brain with those feelings of fulfillment. Interestingly, we each have character strengths that have to power to enormously impact our daily feelings of accomplishment and worth.
The VIA Character Strength survey takes around 30-ish minutes. From there, your character strengths will be evaluated and ranked. The happiness homework is to then incorporate ways to tap into these top strengths daily. There 24 different strengths that will be ranked based on your honest answers to the survey ranging from humor to appreciation of beauty to spirituality. My top strength? Love of Learning.
Quarantine has proven to be the perfect time to cultivate and feed this thirst thanks to all of my free time. A couple of daily practices I've incorporated into my days is note-taking for The Science of Well Being and reading the non-fiction book 'Sapiens' about the history of humankind. Need a few ideas for leaning into your strength? Check them out here and here.
It's incredible how quickly you'll feel your mind and soul growing when you actively choose to feed your strengths. By incorporating these intentional actions into your life, you’ll establish a near baseline for prioritizing your happiness. That’s step one in living a happier life.
