Happiness?

This happiness project started as an experiment and exploration into myself and the current research consensus of happiness. For a week after my proposal and beforehand I researched the many aspects of happiness from the chemical balance in your brain to the triggers and the causes, how stress and family affects it and the many ways that you can improve it. Based on these research results I would conduct experiments on myself and using my WHO-5 wellbeing results as a base measure of my Wellbeing as your happiness is subjective and so varies from person to person and so the Who-5 wellbeing measure has been used in other research papers as a measure between people. There are 5 questions relating to how you have been feeling for the past two weeks each with a score ranging from 1-5 starting with At no time and going up to All of the time for the following 5 questions: "I have felt cheerful and in good spirits" which I scored 4 before the experiments and 4 afterwards "I have felt calm and relaxed" scored 4 before the experiments and 5 afterwards "I have felt active a rigorous" I scored a 3 before and 4 after the experiments "I woke up feeling fresh and rested" I scored a 3 then a 4 after the experiments "My daily life has been filled with things that interest me" which was a first score of 4 then 5 after the experiments to which you times by 4 to get an easy to read score out of 100, 100 being the happiest possible and 0 being the worst imaginable. My first score before the experiments was a total of 72/100, with this baseline for my "normal" happiness I then conducted experiments based on my research to see if it would improve my overall wellbeing level and so my happiness. Note that during these experiments I still worked, and went to university, took exams, my parents went on holiday and left me too look after the house plus I was planning my holiday overseas to see my girlfriend. Yes all of these could and probably have skewed the results but all I can say that it's life, there is always something happening and you have to work through it to make yourself happier.

These experiments involved daily Meditation to help with stress, Donating to charity online, Donating Blood, Talking and interacting with friends more often and interacting and being with family (including pets). After these two weeks of experimentation I retook the WHO-5 test and got my new score to see if these experiments had any effect of my wellbeing, my new score is 88/100, which is a 16 point increase and increased fairly evenly over the 5 questions. We can see that over the two weeks of experiments they were successful in improving my overall wellness score. Not all of the experiments were a complete success, but that is good because I have learnt about my own happiness and moods and how to influence them for the better. The least successful was donating money to charities online, which from the instant I donated felt "Hollow" as in not meaningful, this may be also why many people don't like donating this way as it has none of the benefits of other types of donations. Where as in contrast donating blood, physically giving up something to help someone else had the most success in creating a feeling of happiness and helped boost my self-image for days afterwards. As based on my previous research I tried numerous experiments to increase my wellbeing and therefore my happiness. Based on my measured wellbeing scores, the experiments worked, my stress was reduced overall, I felt more active and had more energy both during the day and starting it and my life has become more interesting, Through curiously my overall happiness according to the WHO-5 scale has not increased over the two week experiment. This may be due to the fact that before these experiments I was not necessarily unhappy, I was just distracted. This could actually be a reason that people don’t see themselves as happy, the appreciation for their life and happiness, I had to take time to calm down de-stress and enjoy what I'm doing and where I am.

From the results and my interpretations it seems that I am happier because I am able to reduce my stress levels and interact with people which all helped me express this happiness that I already had. Meditation plus talking and interacting with family members which includes my pets was quite a boost for my stress relief, the meditation giving needed calm moments during the day. In the future, I think that I will be continuing these activities that have boosted my happiness levels like donating my blood and meditation. Other people can use my research for themselves but happiness is subjective and so the methods that made me happy may not have the same effect on others