Pursuing Happiness – GROWTH Competition Submission
Photo courtesy of Google images
March 18, 2023
When you hear about a class called “Pursuing Happiness” you think, “Wow a class about being happy, I’m happy… this is going to be so easy”. But I can attest that this class teaches you much more. I went into this class thinking it was going to be an easy A, that since I was already perfectly content with my happiness level, it was basically like an extra study hall. What I didn’t know was that there was so much to learn about the psychology, and the science behind happiness and what goes into it. When we first started to learn about the science of happiness, I was in no place to listen. I just wanted my easy A. I would refuse to think that there was any science behind being happy, you just be happy and that’s that. Then one day, we started to learn about PERMA. PERMA is a theory of overall well-being, which is a huge contributor to what makes you happy. PERMA stands for positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishments. Its used to increase your happiness by doing things that cancel out the bad things. These 5 things that you do can completely change your whole entire life. I started to use PERMA in my everyday life, by being positive, engaging in activities that make me happy, by having relationships that are healthy and letting go of the ones that aren’t, finding meaning behind everything that I do, and appreciating my accomplishments and rewarding myself. I found that when I did this, I was a much more positive person, even more than I thought before. I bought into the content we were learning and I had a greater experience because of it. I went from being annoyed to be actually learning about the science of happiness, then to growing as a student and using it to benefit me and my life.
