Introduction
Realizing happiness is adequate to make one’s life fulfilling and joyous. Cheerfulness is, however, a rare aspect among many people around the world. The point that most of the global population leads a life of acting contributes significantly to the loss of happiness. The present project, thus, delves into my happiness journey by describing three critical merriment areas that I had to work on to realize real happiness. Each happiness area described here has two goals that I pursued to ensure the realization of the intended facet of cheerfulness.
Limiting Complaining
Limiting complaining was the first happiness area that I needed to work on. My personality test shows that I am an ISFJ, meaning that I like handling and completing tasks quickly and saving on time. The personality paradigm’s ‘J’ aspect implies my impatience, particularly with people. Growing under time and quality-conscious parents also makes me exhibit escalated expectations to realize superior quality and standards within the least time possible. Not everyone out there is like me, which makes me find it hard to fit in many groups. Learning discipline at a young age, especially from my mother, also makes me expect everyone around me to act morally. I despise pettiness and mediocrity and never rest for the better when the best is realizable. Therefore, the clear difference between my friends, community members, and I makes me somehow hate life at times.
I almost always complain when things are not going as per my standards. Seeing a person act irresponsibly on the road, for example, makes me mad and full of complaints. Having one of my group members fail or delay delivering project work makes me complain harshly. The aspect makes several of my friends fear coming close to me, especially those who understand the difference in personalities between them and me. Better still, I also find myself spending much of the time alone to avoid being let down and, thus, complaining. My inability to control my protesting nature in the past even made me pity friends who wanted to have me around but found it hard to tolerate my demanding character. The first goal to realize this first happiness area involved filling a complaint log for a month to help me reduce the number of my daily objections with time. I trust that keeping records of a difficult thing in life is essential to notice the development and progress that one makes.
I filled the complaint log every night to reduce disruption when doing my other activities during the day. The fact that I had the chance to manage my time while undertaking this essential transformational endeavor made me cherish the process. As such, noting down the complaints of each day before sleeping provided ample opportunity to document the goal. The other objective under the first happiness area further involved going for a walk before logging the complaints, at least thrice a week. The act was meant to grant me ample time for self-reflection and evaluation of what I wanted to complain about. I then documented the goal by recording the variations I made during the walks and reviewing them for submission.
Nurturing Social Relationships and Increasing Affection
The second happiness area to pursue touched on the issue of nurturing social relationships and increasing affection. My busy life and determination to realize premium results make me a ball-buster and a night owl. I never manage to sleep until I have cleared all the tasks on my to-do list, even if that means skipping a night or two awake. The life of working to realize strict deadlines while failing to realize adequate sleep makes me anxious most of the time. That is why one of my goals to achieve the second area of happiness involved the generation of a healthy everyday routine with adequately spaced and planned activities to allow me room to rest. The objective was achieved through the use of alarms, particularly to help me know when to sleep and when to rise.
Utilizing alarms led to the generation of a weekly schedule. I then documented my experience and feelings before, during, and post-the-goal implementation to help me track the transformation and the process causing it. The other objective under the pursuit of this second aspect of happiness was to get close to nature at least twice a week. The target allowed me to break from my tight and pressing chores and breathe fresh air from Mother Nature. I, therefore, went hiking or visited a national park twice a week to realize this goal. Each nature activity was recorded in a weekly log with a specific description of the same, and it affected my moods for documentation purposes.
Savoring Life’s Joys
Savoring life’s joys constituted my third and last area of happiness to pursue. As noted earlier, I lead a busy life with plenty of planned tasks that force me to utilize almost all my time on wearing activities. Time, to me, appears like a series of now, with every second and minute requiring some accounting. It is very hard for me to rejuvenate myself due to my busy schedule. I, therefore, often start my days, weeks, and months very tired. The matter takes away significant happiness from me, thus, the need to embrace life’s joys. My first goal to realize this happiness facet involved learning a new dish every week. The goal impacted me in at least two folds, in that it pushed me to create a time to prepare the nice meals I wanted to recover the lost energy due to the busy life.
Moreover, the first goal made sure that I broke my busy schedule and avoided the use of electronics to learn and try a new skill outside my daily life. Having a weekly logging chart for the learned dish and the specific day I attained such allowed me to document the goal. The weekly logging chart also contained the particular impact of each learned cooking skill on my life. Going swimming at least once a week constituted the second goal to attain the last area of happiness. One of my hobbies is swimming, but I often lack time due to my busy schedule. That is why I chose the practice as a form of savoring life’s joys. Having a weekly logging chart for the times I attained the goal each week allowed me to document it.
Key Insights
The present happiness project exposed me to several discoveries that I bet would never come my way, but for taking this class. The first takeaway from the class and the exercise concerns the knowledge that happiness is an intrinsic aspect humans endeavor to seek, not because happiness needs people, but because humans need to be happy to function well. In addition, the project corrected my past mentality that happiness was a constant factor that comes from an individual’s genes. Through the project, I noticed that what we do as humans directly affects our level of happiness. The realization was according to Lyubomirsky (2007), who says that humans’ daily undertakings affect forty percent of their happiness. Better still, the project also allowed me to notice that happiness can come through an individual’s choices. Choosing to undertake the right tasks and activities and manage my time well, for example, gave me an opportunity to experience real transformation and find wholesome happiness. I endeavor to maintain the good deeds I established during the project to lead a genuinely happy life.
The other crucial takeaway from the happiness project was that I could change my mindset concerning my life and pursuit of happiness. The matter is supported by O’Brien (2008), who notes that real happiness is different from biased happiness. My earlier understanding of happiness was significantly mistaken in that I thought of beating new goals as my real happiness. I would, therefore, skip sleep to push workloads and beat deadlines to make myself happy. I also spent much time on my phone and other electronics every time I was free, thinking that internet-based jokes and memes gave me real happiness. However, the outcome of such was the ever-tired me, who at times found doing things that I cherish, like cooking and swimming, very hard. The mistaken mentality existed due to the wrong perspective I had about merriment. However, the present happiness project challenged my thinking and showed me that spending all my time on weary tasks only made me dull. The project, thus, caused a real impact on me by helping me find the long-lost inner person I always sought through self-draining activities.
Equally important, the happiness project taught me the need to put effort into pursuing pleasure like in the other facets of life. My past trials to lead a joyful life failed because of the inability to focus adequately on the matter. I committed a major mistake by trying to seek an intrinsic aspect via external endeavors. Happiness is an internal force that needs effective management, as per Tracy (2019). Trying to realize contentment by pushing academic or job qualifications, thus, never provides real happiness. That is because the latter activities amount to ‘creating’ happiness, which ought to be ‘found’ and nurtured (Lyubomirsky, 2007). My difficulty in realizing pleasure in the past, compared to the period during and after the happiness project, therefore, created a real sense of my mistake in life. Arguably, I would not have known real merriment but for the happiness project undertaken during this class.
Each goal and activity undertaken during the happiness project led to a particular discovery about pleasure and myself. My first goal was to establish a daily complaint log to help in limiting complaining. The second goal was to go for a walk before complaining at least three times a week. The two goals’ activities allowed me to discover several things about myself and the essence of each activity in my life. For example, I learned that writing down complaints in the evening allowed me to manage my emotions.
The practice of noting down complaints helped me lessen the number of criticisms I made to friends and colleagues, thus, aiding me to boost my relationship and interactions with peers. The aspect worked significantly well in helping to reduce anxiety and aggression when around others, as reiterated by Way and Tracy (2012). Knowing that I would log the complaints at night also reduced my stress levels while taking the walks alone made me challenge myself to see sense in allowing the other people to operate freely. Meditating about the complaints of each day further allowed me to understand my weaknesses and wake up happier, healthier, and with reduced expectations about other people.
Nurturing social relationships and increasing affection was my project’s subsequent area of happiness. The facet involved two activities, developing a healthy daily routine and getting close to nature, no less than twice a week. The earlier activity helped establish a daily operational schedule with adequate time to rest. Working 24/7 forced me to experience irregular sleeping hours, and I did not have time to undertake other crucial activities like physical exercise. The desire to attain a new job and academic goals pushed me to turn a blind eye to the issue of adequate rest and real happiness. The aspect, in turn, made me sad almost every day, particularly after failing to meet a deadline. I had to cut some connections to realize this goal. The use of alarms helped me to plan my time well. The morning and evening alarms also helped realize at least seven hours’ sleep and rest, which is crucial for intrinsic happiness (O’Brien, 2008). Observing animals at the national parks and watching the natural beauty during hiking further allowed me to appreciate nature’s existence through divine providence, which never requires strenuous working.
The last two objectives concerning the happiness area of savoring life’s joys also led to more sightings about myself. Learning a new dish each week and swimming twice a week helped me break from the busy and strenuous life the works exposed to me. Staying away from electronics while making the new dishes and swimming also helped me avoid the time-consuming social media that fuels aggression (Chae, 2018). Whenever I am not researching, I often enter social media platforms, mostly WhatsApp and Facebook, to see the posts made by friends. Seeing colleagues with new cars and houses pushes me to work harder to generate more finances to be like them, as observed by Dutot (2020). The issue also provokes my tendency to blame others, especially when I find someone is not as goal-oriented as I am.
Conclusion and Future Goals
In conclusion, all the goals sought during the happiness project impacted my contentment level significantly. Establishing flexible schedules for the various activities made it easy for me to realize them. However, I nearly halted the project during its initial days due to the feeling that the various activities had become assignments that I had to do daily. Looking back, I cannot regret the process, and I even purpose to maintain the activities for a brighter future.
References
Chae, J. (2018). Reexamining the relationship between social media and happiness: The effects of various social media platforms on conceptualized happiness.Telematics & Informatics, 35(6), 1656-1664. Web.
Dutot, V. (2020). A social identity perspective of social media’s impact on satisfaction with life.Psychology & Marketing, 37(6), 759-772. Web.
Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The how of happiness: A scientific approach to getting the life you want. Penguin Press.
O’Brien, C. (2008). Sustainable happiness: How happiness studies can contribute to a more sustainable future. Canadian Psychological Association, 49(4), 289–295.
Tracy, S. J. (2019). Let’s talk: Conversation as a defining moment for the communication discipline.Health Communication, 1-6. Web.
Way, D. & Tracy, S. J. (2012). Conceptualizing compassion as recognizing, relating and (re)acting: A qualitative study of compassionate communication at hospice.Communication Monographs, 79(3), 292-315. Web.