What a great opportunity to complete a class from Yale’s University Laurie Santos titled The Science of Well-Being. I found out about the Coursea.org class through a sponsored Facebook post the first part of May. In fact, it was a few days before I went dark on Facebook.
The Course description is as follows:
[It] overviews what psychological science says about happiness. The purpose of the course is to not only learn what psychological research says about what makes us happy but also to put those strategies into practice. The first part of the course reveals misconceptions we have about happiness and the annoying features of the mind that lead us to think the way we do. The next part of the course focuses on activities that have been proven to increase happiness along with strategies to build better habits. The last part of the course gives learners time, tips, and social support to work on the final assignment which asks learners to apply one wellness activity aka “Rewirement” into their lives for four weeks.
Laurie Santos is a Professor of Psychology and Head of Silliman Residential College at Yale University. Additionally, she is the director of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory and the Canine Cognition Center at Yale. She received her A.B. in Psychology and Biology from Harvard University in 1997 and her Ph.D. in Psychology from Harvard in 2003.I
I liked being able to assess my strengths and then try the suggested strategies to implement new behaviors. I found using a habit tracker very useful for that purpose.
The four key takeaways for me are:
- Focus on Your Strengths
- Invest in Experiences
- Learn to savor more
- Express Gratitude and Spread Kindness
It also helps to get exercise and enough sleep which is a big problem for students.
New Computer
Along with my course work which was not that demanding, I suffered from crashes, beach balling, and slow performance with my six year old MacBook Pro. When I got the message from Etrcheck, describing a failing hard drive, I took action. I am now writing this on my new Mac mini 2018 hooked up to my existing monitor, keyboard and trackpad. Thanks to my Time Machine backup, it was only a four hour restore of my entire hard drive into the new computer. The MacBook Pro is still operational so I spend two weeks of leisure time transferring all my old photo CDs and DVDs into the Photo Stick I purchased since I don’t have a DVD drive on the new computer.