Notes on: Sources of Happiness or Unhappiness in Everyday Life

'Sources of Happiness or Unhappiness in Everyday Life' is taken from the course 'Managing Happiness' by Arthur Brooks on edX.org.

Remembering that unhappiness is not equal to the lack of happiness is critical. If you are not feeling truly happy, you should be asking yourself: is my issue a lack of happiness or an excess of unhappiness?

Unhappiness can stem from mental illness and it can also stem from other barriers that keep us from pursuing happiness. The best way to distinguish between the two is what scientists call the Day Reconstruction Method.

In 2004, Daniel Kahneman conducted an experiment where participants were asked to think of events like short episodes in a day and write them down in a diary. The participants were then asked to rank these episodes on a scale of positive and negative affect.

Some of the results showed what we would expect, for example, that time spent socialising with friends and family ranked high on the positive scale. Other results were surprising, like interacting with their bosses ranked really high on the negative scale.

The study also revealed that negative affect tended to fluctuate throughout the day, with peak times being in the morning and again in the afternoon (after lunch).

This exercise can be conducted by yourself and can really help shape what are your day to day sources of happiness and unhappiness are. Understanding these sources will help you better plan and prepare for them in the future, and this could help lower or reduce the sources of negative affect and increase the positive ones.