Any attempt to summarise Yale’s ten-week-long course on The Science of Well-Being will not do it justice. This course rewired my brain and changed my understanding of well-being and the human brain. The concepts, scientific studies and readings consistently help to shape a stronger understanding of the human mind - strengths and weaknesses alike. However, the biggest take away from this course is that understanding the science of well-being is simply not enough to change our behaviour for the better.

Our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

- Sonja Lyubomirsky

Although the course does overload you with ample scientific evidence, it excells at a focused delivery of practical and transferable skills and tools that can be applied by anyone in any given scenario. You learn knowledge to understand how your brain works and are supported in a transformative and eye-opening journey. It soon becomes indisputably clear that to make the most use of this knowledge transfer, you must apply the strategies and practice them endlessly.

News-flash - the path to well-being has shortcuts. Luckily, scientists have discovered some reliable strategies and tricks that you can learn to apply in your daily life to make a lasting difference. I summarised the key lessons learned and outlined them below.

Lesson 1: We have deeply rooted misconceptions about what makes us happy

We have the false perception that knowing something makes all the difference. From the get-go, the course challenged this fallacy to repeatedly prove that knowledge is nothing without application. For this reason, the biggest part of this course - besides the lectures and the reading materials - were the assignments (referred to in the course as rewirements).

Unfortunately, our brains are rather fallible - incorrectly perceive certain things and form misleading intuitions. Taking human vision as a metaphor for the human mind, we can see how it is limited in its sense of perception to just the ranges of visible light and is very susceptible to various optical illusions. Simply understanding these limitations and being aware of the illusions does not improve our vision.

The course exposed us to wide ranges of misconceptions about happiness. It deconstructed commonly sought out practices (which we often think bring us joy and fulfillment) using varying scientific studies to prove that they fail to make us happy. The concept of ‘miswanting’ is introduced to label the desires we have that do not bring us the joy we predict. An example being students wanting good grades or people going after promotions and pay rises. Studies repeatedly prove that these pursuits fail to satisfy the pursuers. Our illintuitioned expectations guide us down the wrong paths, while we fail to recognise where we went wrong. This is both due to our mind’s adaptiveness and our bias.

It is equally important to investigate wellness as it is to study misery.

- Sonja Lyubomirsky

Our ability to adapt can be seen as a positive feature of the mind, however, in terms of happiness it means that we quickly adapt to stimulus (such as new jobs, promotions and material purchases) resulting in our lessened satisfaction and shortened appreciation of the very things we thought we desired. Similarly, our brains have an impact bias, which means that we falsely predict how things will impact us. These ‘annoying features’ of the mind affect what we pursue and how we perceive or experience things.

Lesson 2: Recognising what are the things that really make us happy

Given the misconceptions we have about happiness, it is important to understand what truly works and benefits our well-being. A good place to start is to overcome our bias and our hedonic adaptation. This would include things such as not buying things (because we will quickly grow bored of them) and instead invest in experiences - which science says has a much longer lasting impact on our well-being and even has a positive impact on the people around us.

The course enlightens us about better wanting. Instead of pursuing a better job or better grades, it would be far more productive and beneficial for our well-being to seek flow or nourish a healthier mindset that is eager to grow and learn. The course goes in further detail about a number of things that have a meaningful impact on well-being from social connections to mind control and exercise - all supported with scientific evidence and concretely applicable advice.

Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present.

— Jim Rohn

In the end it is more than clear that we need to be aware of the things we are actively pursuing and take action to pursue smarter. Going after things that will not make us happy will damage our overall health, so the course makes it abundantly clear that happiness is the result of making better choices and very much in our control. Returning to the wrong idea that knowing makes all the difference, the course makes a full circle and places equal, if not more, emphasis on the practice and strategies. Now equipped with the knowledge of what actually can bring us happiness, the course proceeds to provide useful strategies that you can apply in your daily lives in order to create habits that will support a healthy trajectory towards genuine and sustainable well-being.

Lesson 3: The strategies and real hack

The layout of the course has a big part to play in the effectiveness of transferring the knowledge and putting the strategies in a manner that can be repeatedly and seamlessly transferred to numerous situations. The overload of scientific evidence in support of the theories and strategies make it difficult to dispute.

Besides being convincing, the course demands that you put the strategies into practice and the course concludes after a four-week-long period of daily practicing and reflecting on your journey.

The one real hack that matters is - there is no hack.

After all the science it is down to the consistent practices that make the biggest difference in the path to achieving positive and sustainable well-being. However, there are plenty of strategies backed up by overwhelmingly convincing scientific evidence, that will help you to stay on the right track:

1. Start with thwarting your adaptation by learning to savour moments, imagining how you would feel if you didn’t have something, expressing gratitude regularly, and living your day as if it was your last. Perhaps it is advice you have heard before, but making any of these practices a daily habit has been proved to significantly impact well-being.

2. Try resetting your points of reference by learning to better observe your situation and avoiding comparing yourself to others. For example, comparing your body to that of a photoshopped model is damaging and catching yourself in these moments to recognise these comparisons are unreasonable can have a positive impact.

3. Built a supportive environment by designing your surroundings to support your well-being and help you sustain your healhty habits. You can do this by removing things from your surroundings that stand in the way of your goals, add reminders that encourage positive behaviour, and surround yourself with more positive and encouraging people. If you goal is to lose weight you should remove unhealthy snacks and foods from your more obvious lines of sight (countertops and easy to reach places) because simply removing them from sight makes you significantly less likely to consume them. Or you can remove them entirely by not buying them and setting reminders on your shopping list to buy better food, encourage your progress and share your goal with someone who will add that social aspect which is proven to have an influence on accountability making you much more likely to succeed.

In conclusion

All of the above strategies prove that to make a difference, one has to work at it consistently. But the good news is - we are habitual creatures. So once we develop a better habit, we will keep doing it. Studies suggest it takes between 60 days and three months to develop a habit. The length of this course lines up.

So with this knowledge you can proceed to make better choices and your body and mind will thank you and reward you in the process. I have experienced first-hand the benefit from the course which I applied to develop the habit of a 15 minute morning meditation and I am working on developing a new habit of reading for 30 minutes every night before bed. I have been less successful with the latter, but this course has taught me to remain consistent and to keep trying and in the process I will already begin to reap the benefits of my new habit-in-formation.

If this summary was not sufficient to feed your curiosity, the course is available online. I recommend it to everyone who is interested in investing in their personal growth!