Page 7. Watch the Lecture. Part D. LISTEN FOR DETAILS

Unit one

page 7: watch the lecture

part D: listen for details

good morning everybody; today I want to get started with the main topic of this course, happiness.

First, I want to talk about how psychologists like myself measure happiness.

Then, will look at some common characteristics of happy people and finally we’ll look at whether or not we can change our level of happiness.

in other words, whether we can learn to be happier.

Okay, so we all know what it’s like to feel happy, right?

but how do we measure happiness?

one common method psychologists use is interviewing people.

First, we asked them questions to find out how happy they are, how happy they feel in general.

then we gather information about them, like their age, health, income and so on.

we use all of this data to determine the most common characteristics of happy people.

So, what have psychologists learned?

Well, there are a few characteristics we know are not relevant to happiness.

one of them is having a lot of money.

as long as people have enough money for home, food and clothing, having more money doesn’t make people happier.

so money doesn’t buy happiness; are you surprised?

another thing that is not connected to happiness is having more education.

people with a lot of education on are no happier than people with little education.

so now maybe your questioning your decision to take this class, huh?

finally a third characteristic that is not a requirement for happiness is youth, being young.

in fact the opposite is true.

one study found that 60 to 64-year-olds are actually happier than 20 to 24-year-olds.

So, we know that money, education, and youth are not important to happiness.

then what is?

well there is no one way to achieve happiness.

but there are a few specific characteristics that happy people have in common.

one very important characteristic, is family and friends.

a study of students at the University of Illinois, found that the happiest students had strong connections to family and friends, and if they made time to spend with them.

another common feature of happy people is that they have religious beliefs or a belief in something bigger than themselves.

this helps them feel that life has significance or meaning.

A third important thing about happy people is that they set goals for themselves; in the workplace or in their personal lives, they establish goals around things they find interesting or things that allow them to use their strengths.

Now, another question psychologists have tried to resolve is:

Can we change how happy we are? can we learn to be happier?

some psychologists think the answer is “no we can’t”, this is because research shows that happiness depends a lot on our personality, the kind of person we are.

some people just have more positive attitudes about life than others.

we’ve all noticed this, right?

and because it’s difficult for people to change their personalities, some psychologists think that we stay at about the same level of happiness throughout our lives.

but many of us in the field of positive psychology believe we can change, that we can consciously learn to be happier.

positive psychologists have developed some exercises that people can do to feel happier.

one of these is called the gratitude visit.

in this exercise, people write a letter to someone they want to thank; for example, a parent, a friend, a teacher.

Someone they feel has helped them in their life; but they don’t send the letter, instead they visit the person and read the letter to them.

Now, research shows this really works to make the person who wrote the letter feel happier.

Why?

First, it helps them feel more connected to others and remember that is very important for happiness.

Second, the people are giving something in this case, they’re thanks to someone else and giving or helping others makes us feel better about ourselves; it helps us feel that our lives have meaning.

in addition to the gratitude visit, psychologists have developed other exercises that help people focus on the positive things in their lives, and help them use their strengths to achieve goals.

and studies have shown that these exercises can help people feel better.

However, do have limits; for one thing, each exercise only works for a certain amount of time.

for example, the gratitude visit only makes people happier for about three months.

and of course, we can’t become a lot happier.

Remember, we can’t totally change our personalities.

you can’t take a really unhappy negative person and make him or her feel super happy all the time.

but I do believe, that if we really want to, we can all learn ways to feel better; to feel the best that we can.

and you’re going to find this out for yourselves.

for the next time I’d like you to look into choosing your own happiness exercise.