You will find many people talking about happiness that they take as references to some academic experts like the following ones:
- In Havard, Tal Ben-Shahar, a doctor who teaches the course “Greater happiness” and his chair is based on surveys and field studies on the characteristics and components that allow living happily, namely: exercise, breakfast, Life all the good you have, be assertive, spend money on experiences not on things, face your challenges, surround yourself with beautiful memories, phrases and photos of your loved ones everywhere, greet and be kind to other people, wear shoes that Be comfortable, take care of your posture, listen to music, feed well, be comfortable and feel attractive.
- Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D. in social psychology from Stanford University and an academic at the University of Carolina, who already tells us that the genetic factor influences 50% of our happiness, 40% depends on our intention, self-control and the remaining 10% Of the happiness of the context.
It also tells us how to be happy: expressing gratitude, cultivating optimism, avoiding social comparison, practicing kindness, caring for social relationships, learning to forgive, “flowing” more (how to be personal), savoring the joys of life, Commitment to one’s goals, practicing religion and spirituality, taking care of one’s body and soul, meditating, performing some physical activity, leading a healthy diet.
Well, it seems that to work happiness, an emotional subject with a rational basis, what prevails today are “certain gurus” who, based on statistics as arguments, share what makes people happy, careless many times Of what makes the student happy. It is as if a teacher of drawing instead of teaching to paint, to get the student to connect with his expression and create a legacy for the world, only try to copy the works that have already painted others. Can you imagine the robot machinery that would arise?
Let’s be serious, happiness will have a basis (a definition, what advantages it has, what readings are there in the world, etc.), but from that, stop the nonsense of looking at the diet, the forgiving, or the generous!
In 2013, and after years of developing methodologies to help people, Pedro Amador started a complete course at The Catholic University of Uruguay: “How to achieve happiness with Autocoaching”, where in addition to some theoretical brushstrokes of what is the Happiness and what is said by the world, we started using practical methods so that each student understood how to seek their happiness.
We repeat, YOUR HAPPINESS, and not the one desired by the statistics of some doctors of prestigious universities. Applying common sense about statistics is indispensable if we do not believe everything the social sciences tell us.
The result was more than satisfactory because the students (inquilines as they call them here in Uruguay) began to practice in the first person the reality of turning the complaint (nonsense) into energy for action.
All students made use of the HappinessPlay tool and then checked a complete climate report of all attendees, with the average values of the wheels of life, the primary needs, and above all, an analysis of the suggested tasks Based on the set of changes that people proposed.
We also had a special guest, Carlos Servian, who provided some ideas of coaching discipline, and shared experiences of the athlete Deborah Rodriguez, where we see how important it is to fight for dreams.
The Socratic method is the one that works best, in the long run, to help people meditate on their past, present and future happiness, what are you waiting to start working on your happiness?
Original Spanish version “Cómo educar en felicidad (y además en la Universidad)“.
