Happiness Practice #3: Random Acts of Kindness

Text from the following online course offered by EdX website.

BerkeleyX: GG101x The Science of Happiness

Happiness Practice #3: Random Acts of Kindness

Background

We all perform acts of kindness at one time or another. These acts may be large or small, and their beneficiaries may not even be aware of them. Yet their effects can be profound—not only on the recipient but on the giver as well. This exercise asks you to perform five acts of kindness in one day as a way of both promoting kindness in the world and cultivating happiness in yourself and others.

Time required

Varies depending on your acts of kindness. Could be anywhere from several minutes to several hours.

Instructions

One day this week, perform five acts of kindness—all five in one day. It doesn’t matter if the acts are big or small, but it is more effective if you perform a variety of acts.

The acts do not need to be for the same person—the person doesn’t even have to be aware of them. Examples include feeding a stranger's parking meter, donating blood, helping a friend with a chore, or providing a meal to a person in need.

After each act, write down what you did in at least one or two sentences; for more of a happiness boost, also write down how it made you feel.

Evidence that it works

Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K., & Schkade, D. (2005) Pursuing happiness: The architecture of sustainable change.Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.

Study participants who performed five acts of kindness every week for six weeks saw a significant boost in happiness, but only if they performed their five acts in a single day rather than spread out over each week. This may be because many acts of kindness are small, so spreading them out might make them harder to remember and savor.

Why it works

Researchers believe this practice makes you feel happier because it makes you think more highly of yourself and become more aware of positive social interactions. It may also increase your kind, helpful—or “pro-social”—attitudes and tendencies toward others. Evidence suggests that variety is key: People who perform the same acts over and over show a downward trajectory in happiness, perhaps because any act starts to feel less special the more it becomes routine.

Source

Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D., University of California, Riverside

Happiness Practice #2: Active Listening

Text from the following online course offered by EdX website.

BerkeleyX: GG101x The Science of Happiness

Happiness Practice #2: Active Listening

Background

Often we’ll listen to a conversation partner without really hearing him or her. In the process, we miss opportunities to connect with that person--and even risk making him or her feel neglected, disrespected, and resentful.

This exercise helps you express active interest in what the other person has to say and make him or her feel heard—a way to foster empathy and connection. This technique is especially well-suited for difficult conversations (such as arguments with a spouse) and for expressing support. Research suggests that using this technique can help others feel more understood and improve relationship satisfaction.

Time required

At least 10 minutes. Try to make time for this practice at least once per week.

Instructions

Find a quiet place where you can talk with your partner without interruption or distraction. Invite him or her to share what’s on his or her mind. As he or she does so, try to follow the steps below. You don’t need to cover every step, but the more you do cover, the more effective this practice is likely to be.

1. Paraphrase. Once the other person has finished expressing a thought, paraphrase what he or she said to make sure you understand and to show that you are paying attention. Helpful ways to paraphrase include “What I hear you saying is…” “It sounds like…” and “If I understand you right….”

2. Ask questions. When appropriate, ask questions to encourage the other person to elaborate on his or her thoughts and feelings. Avoid jumping to conclusions about what the other person means. Instead ask questions to clarify his or her meaning, such as, “When you say_____, do you mean_____”? 

3. Express empathy. If the other person voices negative feelings, strive to validate these feelings rather than questioning or defending against them. For example, if the speaker expresses frustration, try to consider why he or she feels that way, regardless of whether you think that feeling is justified or whether you would feel that way yourself were you in his or her position. You might respond, “I can sense that you’re feeling frustrated,” and even “I can understand how that situation could cause frustration.”

 4. Use engaged body language. Show that you are engaged and interested by making eye contact, nodding, facing the other person, and maintaining an open and relaxed body posture. Avoid attending to distractions in your environment or checking your phone. Be mindful of your facial expressions: Avoid expressions that might communicate disapproval or disgust.

5. Avoid judgment. Your goal is to understand the other person’s perspective and accept it for what it is, even if you disagree with it. Try not to interrupt with counter-arguments or mentally prepare a rebuttal while the other person is speaking.

6. Avoid giving advice. Problem-solving is likely to be more effective after both conversation partners understand one another’s perspective and feel heard. Moving too quickly into advice-giving can be counterproductive. 

7. Take turns. After the other person has had a chance to speak and you have engaged in the active listening steps above, ask if it’s okay for you to share your perspective. When sharing your perspective, express yourself as clearly as possible using “I” statements (e.g., “I feel overwhelmed when you don’t help out around the house”). It may also be helpful, when relevant, to express empathy for the other person’s perspective (e.g., “I know you’ve been very busy lately and don’t mean to leave me hanging…”)

Evidence that it works

Weger, H., Castle Bell, G., Minei, E. M., & Robinson, M. C. (2014). The relative effectiveness of active listening in initial interactions. International Journal of Listening, 28(1), 13-31.

Participants had brief conversations (about their biggest disappointment with their university) with someone trained to engage in active listening, someone who gave them advice, or someone who gave simple acknowledgments of their point of view. Participants who received active listening reported feeling more understood at the end of the conversation.

Why it works

Active listening helps listeners better understand others’ perspectives and helps speakers feel more understood and less threatened. This technique can prevent miscommunication and spare hurt feelings on both sides. By improving communication and preventing arguments from escalating, active listening can make relationships more enduring and satisfying. Practicing active listening with someone close to you can also help you listen better when interacting with other people in your life, such as students, co-workers, or roommates.

Source

Instructions adapted from: Markman, H., Stanley, S., & Blumberg, S.L. (1994). Fighting for your marriage. San Francisco: Josey-Bass Publishers.

acepto el proceso de poder mejorar

acepto el proceso de poder mejorar

me gusta la alta literatura escribir cartas y sentir la felicidad

me gusta quererme

apagar las luces pero nunca todas

me gusta ver y me gusta sentir

me gusta escuchar y las personas que escuchan

me gusta absorber pero regalando me expando

me gusta el desorden que aprendo a controlar

me gusta el espacio me gusta respirar

la comida despacio empiezo a degustar

paladeo palabras

saboreo manantiales

escribiendo a doble excluyo minutos

el ritmo es profundo

cuando la velocidad es la correcta

me gustan las chicas literatas con horas en su colchón

Text from the following online course offered by EdX website.

BerkeleyX: GG101x The Science of Happiness

Happiness Practice #1: Three Good Things

Background

This exercise asks you to remember and list three positive things that have happened in your day so far and consider what caused them.

Time required

10 minutes/day for at least one week.

Instructions

Each day for at least one week, write down three things that went well for you that day, and provide an explanation for why they went well. It is important to create a physical record of your items by writing them down; it is not enough simply to do this exercise in your head. The items can be relatively small in importance (e.g., “my co-worker made the coffee today”) or relatively large (e.g., “I earned a big promotion”). To make this exercise part of your daily routine, some find that writing before bed is helpful.

As you write, follow these instructions:

1. Give the event a title (e.g., “co-worker complimented my work on a project”)
2. Write down exactly what happened in as much detail as possible, including what you did or said and, if others were involved, what they did or said.
3. Include how this event made you feel at the time and how this event made you feel later (including now, as you remember it).
4. Explain what you think caused this event—why it came to pass.
5. Use whatever writing style you please, and do not worry about perfect grammar and spelling. Use as much detail as you'd like.
6. If you find yourself focusing on negative feelings, refocus your mind on the good event and the positive feelings that came with it. This can take effort but gets easier with practice and can make a real difference in how you feel.

Evidence that it works

Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410.

Visitors to a website received instructions for performing this exercise and four others. Writing about three good things increased happiness for each time point during a six-month period (immediately afterward and one week, one month, three months, and six months later).

Why it works

By giving you the space to focus on the positive, this practice teaches you to notice, remember, and savor the better things in life. It may prompt you to pay closer attention to positive events down the road and engage in them more fully—both in the moment and later on, when you can reminisce and share these experiences with others. Reflecting on the cause of the event may help attune you to the deeper sources of goodness in your life.

Sources

Jeffrey Huffman, M.D., Harvard Medical School

Sonja Lyubomirksy, Ph.D., University of California, Riverside

TRY IT: THREE GOOD THINGS

While we recommend that you do the Three Good Things practice regularly in your happiness practice notebook.

Avoiding distractions, handwritten.

Should I have less friends?

Past week, I thought about Aristotle’s “virtue stands in the middle”. I guess my interpretation was incorrect.

During last year, I have been struggling about Facebook and their doubtful social function. From my personal experience, Facebook does not serve for maintaining relationships, but it helps me to know about how my friends are doing. Or at least, to know what they want other people to see how they are doing. Therefore, I think it is not a reliable source to being updated.

I ideated some strategies of alternative use of Facebook, like posting once per month with a general resume of what I had done, and thanking the people I had shared those moments with. It worked just once. On the other hand, the best solution I found to keep updated with my friends was writing letters. (Un)Fortunately, the mere nature of letters it is highly exclusive and time consuming, signifying the value of the relationships and the people involved on it.

Logically, the first weeks of my life in Copenhagen have been awfully busy: paperwork, flat and job hunting, create a social network, knowing how to move around… The point is I feel like I want to share my experience with my friends, with more than one. Writing a letter to each of them would have been tremendously time consuming, and due the situation I am, it seemed to me unattainable.

Trying to kill to flies in one clap, I wrote an impersonal letter and I sent it to some of my friends. Technology and e-mail allow us to make this kinds of betrayal to friendship and human relationships. In XXI century it seems that this is what we have, and maybe we should adapt to it. I cannot figure out this situation yet.

Within the variety of answers I have received to my impersonal letter the most common has been silence. Some of my friends have answer me back recounting  how is going for them; others have use instant communication to confirm the reception of the letter, show me their gladness for hearing news form me, and telling me their intentions to write me back. No hurries, no problem.

I guess those who remain silent have not receive the message, have not read it, (one said it was too long on the second paragraph), have felt offended by the lack of exclusivity of the letter, have not found time to answer me back, or have found it pointless. Anyhow, I think it is not a bad strategy to keep my distant social life alive. I found it way more personal than Facebook, where our friends are not our friends; or a blog, which is completely open and public.

Maybe the solution of my problem is having less social life, letting some of my friendships die, or communicating with people more rarely. Just to conclude, it is a pity to discover that well-intentioned attempts of caring for my social network have had these odd and no so positive consequences. I will continue looking for and building my way. Maybe I should come back to Facebook instantaneity…. 

SNAPCHAT

It was in a library when a friend decided to include me in a selfie. Trying to be nice and funny, I put one of my stupid grimaces for the camera. Sadly, the burst of happiness of the photographer was destroyed moments later when I discover that the destiny of the picture was, irremediably, disappearance. Merciless, without second opportunities; without thinking twice; without the possibility of erase the picture unwillingly while toying with the screen; without the possibility of losing the smartphone in a wild party night; without any brother who drop the milk in your device. The picture had already vanish.

This is Snapchat, a burst of fleeting happiness.

Each time I think about people uploading pictures of their breakfasts on Instagram, I start to freak out. (Call it breakfasts, touristic points, streets, sunrises, sunsets, kisses, poems … Call it life) Was it necessary to destroy the moment of eating your breakfast for taking a picture? Was it necessary to decide the filter while swallowing the last sip of your coffee? Was it necessary observe how the photo is being uploaded while chewing the last piece of your croissant? Was it satisfactory to see the likes of your Facebook friends while tipping the waiter? Did you upload the photo while taking the breakfast, or did you take the breakfast while uploading the photo?

Instagram aside, Snapchat is even funnier. The mere nature of time and moments fading away is not enough for creating suffering in certain people. They have to see moments vanish twice.

The main advantage of technology is to improve human skills. Words apprehend and possess reality more stable than thoughts; writing transmits our ideas and thoughts longer and further than voices; pictures preserves our visual memories more reliable and unalterable than brains; cars moves us faster and further than our bodies; Internet needs to be thoroughly analyzed; but Snapchat… Snapchat burst our happiness safer and less harmfully than drugs, I guess.

A couple of days ago, speaking with a friend he affirmed, One Snapchat video a day is enough for me to know what my friends are doing. I am happy just with that.

Naively, I asked, One Snapchat video a day or one letter a month, what do you prefer?

At this moment, both know what lasts longer. But, how sensitive we are?  How emotionally stable? How much do we need bursts of happiness? And, how sensible are our brains?

For those who have read Flourish (Seligman, 2012) you already know that happiness is not well-being. For those who have read Authentic Happiness (Seligman, 2004), you already know what savoring means. It is not about how much do we have, but about how much do we enjoy what we already have. Quality versus quantity. It seems that our damaged brains just believe in images. Thomas had to put their fingers in Jesus wounds to believe. Probably, a Snapchat photo would have been enough for him.

To finish with, I will tell another curious anecdote. Once, I needed some photos for an event to which I had not assisted. Therefore, I used the power of my social network to access to someone who had attended. I was incredibly happy when I found a friend of a friend who had gone there. Obviously in the Smartphone era, I was completely convinced that she had taken the photos I needed. I guess you already know with which app she took the pictures.

There was no picture at all of the performances. None. It had been two days ago, she had been there, taking photos with her smartphone, destroying her moments, consuming her life, and then, there was not any photo at all. The advantage of killing a moment is the possibility of recovering it later. Why do we have to retain instant moments in an instant way? What is the sense of it? If we want to immortalize a moment, we can do it. If we want to live a moment, we can do it. But, what is the purpose of killing moments, twice? A gush of happiness.

Life is disappearing continuously, but the wisdom I have found hidden among the words of these sentence seems eternal to me.

“Man when living is soft and tender; when dead he is hard and though […];

the tree when is too though will break”

Lao-Tzu, Tao Te King.

My rigidity has lead me to conflicts, suffering and the destruction of what would have been wonderful moments. Some may call it ego. I like to call it future, I like to call it hope.

 References:

                 Seligman, M. E. P. (2004). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (Edición: 1st Free Press Trade Pbk. Ed.). New York: Simon + Schuster Inc.

                 Seligman, M. E. P. (2012). Flourish / Martin Seligman. North Sydney, N.S.W: William Heinemann Australia.

DESIGNERS

(It was not the best day. Sometimes I lose my nerves.)

I guess I am not changing anything. Neither for the better, nor for the worse. The brain was made for adaptation. No matter where we end, well-being level and satisfaction with life will stabilize over time.

Anti-utopias tell us about the weirdo, that unhappy individual in an almost perfect world. 1984, A brave new world (Un mundo feliz, in its Spanish translation…), Black mirror, Wall-e … People will be happy and will remain satisfied whatever the conditions of their futile existence. Only the individual who does not know suffers. He who does not know how to avoid the responsibility of humankind; how to stop thinking about the destiny of our specie; how to forget the anxiety of death suffers, silently or loudly, but suffers.

1984, simply a solitary nostalgic of thoughts and vocabulary. Orwell wanted to tittle the work “The last man in Europe”. 1984 was less aggressive, I guess. A brave new world, such a couple of misfits. Even more, when they offer to be expelled one of them does not want to leave his perfect society. Nothing matters, nothing.

Black Mirror. Black mirror. A guy threatening with committing suicide with the screen of his jail, on a screen. Meanwhile people continue riding towards nothingness. Nothing happens, and that is what happens. The system does not introduce the glass in our throats because we are the system. We cannot kill ourselves; we are just adapting to live with the pressure of being reduced to vacuity. The bravery attempt of a weirdo change nothing. Because that is what they are going to change. Nothing.

[By the way, reality will surpass fiction. Value judgments aside.]

http://www.20minutes.fr/insolite/1471127-20141030-video-elysway-facebook-morts

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/10/brazilian-prisoners-cycle_n_1662520.html

Wall-e. A happy ending story for kids to let them preserve the hopes for a couple of years more. Nothing further from the reality. However, it has a good point. When humankind loose the control, technology with a good purpose will be our only salvation. Not the designer, but the device. Id est, what is written, not the writer. Designers die. Designers with their calm conscience just hope that when they will be discover it will not be already too late. Once written I just can say:

Good luck.