Based on the concepts of positive psychology, this course aims to show that we look for the wrong things in life. Lots of money, a career, awesome stuff… None of this brings happiness. Investing in experiences, spending time with friends, meditating, sleeping, gratitude, looking after ourselves… these are the things that make us happy. But our brains are distorted, full of prejudices and annoying features that don’t help us in our quest for happiness. This is one of the most interesting aspects of this course. Laurie Santos provides data, examples of scientific studies and plenty of references, but throughout the course, there are rewirement exercises and a final rewirement assignment to do. It’s all about putting theory into practice. I loved this course, but I could really start again from the beginning, as some of the prejudices are genuinely challenging to overcome. A fantastic course that everyone should do.
“Let’s start with savouring. What do I mean by savouring? Well, in this psychological context, when I’m talking about savouring, I’m going to be talking about this act of stepping outside your own experience to kind of review and appreciate it. So when we have a good experience, we are eating ice cream, some of you might have had some of the goodies that are outside, one of those delicious cookies and so on. You can just have that experience, or you could kind of be mindful as you’re having it, instead realize that it is that experience. You can have the moment where you realize this is actually a good delicious experience, I like eating some glucose that is tasting really good right now. And you could have this moment of realization where you’re like this is really awesome. This is the phenomenon of savouring. And it turns out that savouring does a couple of things. One is, it forces you to actually notice and enjoy that experience, and keep your attention on it. Our attention is this horrible beast that is going to be moving around all the time. You can be eating your cookie thinking about what your problem set is and so on. Or you could be eating your cookie, realizing you’re having this enjoyable experience. And the latter means you notice things much more. That means you start higher on your hedonic adaptation curve, and it takes you longer to go down. The second reason that savouring is really important, is it kind of focuses you on that experience for even longer, and that can also help you prevent adaptation.”