Action for Happiness
The staff in Counseling and Wellness Services hopes everyone has had a great start to the Fall 2021 semester!
The Counseling and Wellness Services staff members are available Monday – Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. for in-person and via Zoom counseling, consultation, and the referral needs of currently registered students, but we wanted to share additional virtual resources that may be beneficial during this time.
Action for Happiness is a movement of people committed to building a happier and more caring society. People who want to see a fundamentally different way of life — where people care less about what they can get just for themselves and more about the happiness of others.
Please visit the Action for Happiness website for more information and resources.
Action for Happiness has created monthly action calendars that “are packed with actions you can take to help create a happier and kinder world” that Counseling and Wellness Services will share to facilitate a happier and kinder state of being for our campus community.
The month of October focuses on Optimism, based on the Key of Direction from the 10 Keys to a Happier Life (described further down in this article).
Optimistic October
Especially when things are feeling a bit tough, it can help to set some goals. Making achievable goals, as well as having both short-term and longer term, more ambitious goals, helps us feel we’re making progress. It doesn’t matter if your goal for the day is something really small, the important thing is to give yourself the opportunity to feel like you’ve achieved something and to celebrate that! This month’s calendar is full of ideas to help you think about how you can put this into practice.
This Month’s Key Theme:
Have Goals to Look Forward To
Have Goals to Look Forward To Poster
Feeling good about the future is important for our happiness. We all need goals to motivate us and these need to be challenging enough to excite us, but also achievable. If we try to attempt the impossible, it can cause unnecessary stress. Choosing ambitious, but realistic goals gives our lives direction and brings a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when we achieve them.
Why are goals good for us?
Goals are the way we can turn our values and dreams into reality. Happiness doesn’t just happen. It comes from thinking, planning and pursuing things that are important to us. Scientific research shows that setting and working toward goals can contribute to happiness in various ways, including:
- Being a source of interest, engagement or pleasure
- Giving us a sense of meaning and purpose
- Bringing a sense of accomplishment when we achieve what we set out to (or milestones along the way). This also builds our confidence and belief in what we can do in the future [2][3][4]
Goals help focus our attention. Actively working toward them appears to be as important for our wellbeing as achieving the end results we are aiming for.
Goals are most successful when they’re something we really want to achieve and when we set them for ourselves, rather than being something someone else wants us to do.
What makes a good goal?
Goals can be long-term, short-term or even day-to-day. A long-term goal might be a big career or life goal — for example, to become a doctor or obtain a qualification. A short-term goal might be a plan for the coming weeks or months — for example, to organize a party or join a 5-a-side team. A day-to-day goal might be just to cook something different or contact an old friend.
Smaller goals may seem unimportant. But having personal projects that matter to us and are manageable has been consistently shown to boost wellbeing, especially when they’re supported by others around us. And it’s even better if we can link our smaller goals back to our bigger aims and priorities in life.
The way we set goals influences the actions we take to achieve them, the effort we put in and how persistent we are at sticking to them. Good goal-setting can be learned (see Set your goals and make them happen). Some of our goals may be ambitious, but it’s important that they’re still achievable. Achieving our goals brings a sense of accomplishment and makes us feel more positive about the future.
Looking Forward with Optimism
Science shows that people who are optimistic tend to be happier, healthier and cope better in tough times. [1] Although we may have a natural tendency to be more optimistic or pessimistic, there are things we can do to take a more optimistic outlook, without losing touch with reality.
Optimism is about believing that things are more likely to turn out good than bad. Not surprisingly our level of optimism can influence how persistent we are in aiming for our goals and how we deal with setbacks.
Taking an optimistic approach to our goals includes:
- Choosing goals that take us toward something positive we want to achieve, rather than goals that help us avoid things we don’t want.
- Being proactive when problems arise and looking for ways to resolve them, rather than ignoring or putting off dealing with issues.
- Avoiding dwelling on the negative and learning to accept difficult things that we can’t change and re-adjusting our goals rather than avoiding them. [2]
Being a Realistic Optimist
Although there is some evidence of benefits to pessimism (such as in assessing risks to our health), research suggests that optimism is better for our health and happiness overall. Studies show that in difficult situations — as starting college, aging or dealing with medical issues — optimists appear to experience less distress and higher well-being than pessimists. [1]
But it’s important we keep our feet on the ground. An overly optimistic outlook can be unhelpful. Being optimistic does not mean blindly ignoring the negative facts. Having unrealistically high expectations can lead to disappointment, a sense of failure and a more pessimistic view of the future.
When we think about the future, we are all guessing to some degree. So, we have to base our goals and our judgments on what little we know now. Taking a realistic but hopeful view of the outcomes seems to increase the likelihood that things really will turn out OK. [5]
We encourage you to visit 10 Keys to Happier Living on the Action for Happiness website for more in-depth information about each of these 10 keys.
Wishing you all a happy and healthy semester!
Counseling and Wellness Services Staff
Campus Center 270
(518) 629-7320
counseling@hvcc.edu
Footnoted references from ActionforHappiness.org:
[1] Carver, C.S., Scheier, M.F., Miller, C.J., & Fulford, D. (2009). Optimism. In S.J.Lopez & C.R. Snyder (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. NY: Oxford University Press.
[2] Wrosch, C., & Scheier, M.F. (2003). Personality and quality of life: The importance of optimism an goal adjustment. Quality of Life Research, 12, 59-72
[3] Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The How of Happiness. London: Penguin Books
[4] Rasmussen, H,N., Wrosch, C., & Scheier, M.F., & Carver, C.S. (2006). Self-regulation processes and health: The importance of optimism and goal adjustment. Journal of Personality, 74, 1721-1747
[5] Schneider, S. L. (2001). In search of realistic optimism: Meaning, knowledge, and warm fuzziness. American Psychologist, 56, 250-263.
[6] Locke, E.A. (2002) Setting goals for life and happiness. In S.J. Lopez & C.R.Snyder (Eds.) Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology. NY: Oxford University Press.
Published: Thu, 07 Oct 2021 11:40:23 +0000 by k.weeks