Happiness & Work

I deserve to be happy at work. I want to wake up in the morning and have the feeling of wanting to go to work. An appreciation for the wonderful career I have. I am currently a college student. I am a step closer to the career of my dreams. People often ask me questions like; where do I see myself in ten years? Do I think this is right career choice for me? The only person who knows me the best is me. I will answer these questions not because someone asked me. I will answer them because I want to create a plan for my future.
　
Where do I see myself in ten years? I see myself owning a successful business where I help people. I like to listen to people. When I help someone with a problem, it brings me a sense of joy. I cant make everyone on earth smile. The fact that I made one person smile, is enough to make me feel satisfied. I would like a career that gives me the same amount of pleasure as though it was my calling. A calling when a person works because they want to. The person is passionate about their work, which allows them to feel a sense of personal fulfillment. When I am working I want to feel like I am making a difference. I will admit I want to make money. I want to be able to live comfortable. At the same time, I don’t want to obtain too much money, it may change my morals. I do not want the highest paying job and I am miserable. In my opinion, making that much money is not worth sacrificing your happiness. I’ve found my career that makes me happy.

Do I think this is the right career choice for me? I think this is the right career choice for me. This is the right career choice for me because I can not see myself doing something different. There is nothing better than enjoying my career. The school work I am currently working on to get my degree will be worth it in the end. I can see the big picture. I’ve learned that listening to other peoples advice about what I should be doing is one thing. To have the knowledge of what I want and being happy with my choice is another. There is no doubt in my mind that this is what I want to do with my life.
　
　
When I die, I want to be remembered as a successful woman who loved her career. The woman who helped any people with their problems. The person who encourage other employees to take pride in their work. I wish happiness was a disease that I could spread all over the world. Everyone including myself deserves to be happy. We should apply this concepts to our work place. I am ready to be happy at work.
　
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Happines in Education Paper

There are some demons I must overcome in order to become a better student. The demons represent my negative attitude towards my education. My procrastination towards my school work and the way I get easily distracted. I am writing about my flaws to better understand why I act the way I do towards my education. I am the only person who can solve this problem. In order to solve it, I must analyze the problem. These are the steps I will take to become a better student.

          My first step towards becoming a better student is changing my attitude towards my education. I have an attitude of a quitter. If I do not understand a task, I will get upset. When I get upset, I tell myself the reason I do not understand is because I’m not smart enough. This will eventually lead to my decision to give up. I’ve told myself these negative views for so long that I’ve started to believe it. My performance in school is not at the level I know it could be. For example, math is a difficult subject. I have always had trouble with math. I remember my teacher telling the class on Friday that we were going to have a test on Monday. I started to study for the test, but I still was having trouble. I closed my book and enjoyed my weekend. When I took the test on Monday, I failed. I told myself, oh well I knew I was going to fail. I was creating an alibi for failing the math test. Professor Dan Gilbert refers to this term as synthetic happiness. Synthetic happiness is defined as a person who did not receive what they wanted and the person will pretend that this is what they were aiming for in the beginning. I am guilty of committing the act of synthetic happiness. Being happy is a right that all human beings have. So why not combine the concept of happiness and education. Flow, according to Csikszentmihalyi, is the state in which one is immersed in an experience that is rewarding in and of itself, a state in which we feel we are one with the experience, in which “action and awareness are merged”. I can take the concept of flow; apply it to all my classes. I will be able to learn better. I understand education is not this annoying task that I have to do. My education is my way of expanding my horizons. To show the world what I am capable of. I have to understand that everything is not easy or something I’m going to find interesting. The material I find difficult will one day become a task I can handle. If I continue to have a positive way of thinking, I will go far in life. Anything is possible if I believe it is. Failure is not a horrible thing. I should not get so upset to the point where I want to give up. I should not get upset because I can learn from failure. I can become a better student. I can view failure as my motivation. If everyone in the world were all perfect, then there is no room to grow. There would be nothing to learn from. I want to be proud of my accomplishments. I know this process will not happen overnight but it will happen. My mom always told me “you can do anything you put your mind to”. I will put my mind to this and become a better student.

          My second step towards becoming a better student is to stop procrastinating and being distracted. The reason I act this way is because I find the work too difficult. I don’t have enough time to complete the assignment. I will begin to feel anxiety. When I avoid the school work, I start to relax. I find it hard to go back to doing the work. I will participate in activities that I find interesting. The time comes; I know I have to finish my assignment. There would be an angel on one shoulder and a devil on another shoulder. The angel would tell the person the right thing to do. The devil would tell the person to do the wrong thing, which is usually what the person wants to do. In my case, the angel would say “complete the assignment“. The devil would say “I have all the time in the world, continue to enjoy yourself“. Another factor that triggers my procrastination habit is the stress in my life. If I have a personal issue, it will remain on my mind while I’m working on an assignment. This is a huge distraction. I will not complete my work and try to escape. When I escape I feel like my problems are on hold and I feel better. It is a bitter sweet moment. The sweet part is I’m getting away from my issues. The bitter part is if I do not complete the assignment, I will receive grief for not doing the work. Also, I will not understand the topic. I have to learn that my education is important. My education will always be here but my problems will not. I have to get my priorities straight. I do not want to be anti social but there should be a time for everything and everyone. A solution to my issue is time management. Time management is important because I have less of a chance to feel like I’m drowning with school work. I will have time for both my personal and student life. Another solution would be asking the professor for help during their office hours. I will understand the work and be able to focus. I will make time for everyone and everything in my life.

          I have completed my steps towards becoming a better student. I understand myself. I’ve acknowledged where my problem comes from. Admitting my flaws is not something; I would’ve done in the past. In the past I would’ve blamed other people. I was not taking responsibility for my actions towards my education. I am taking charge from this day forward. I will become a better student, most of all I will become a better person.

Happiness in Education?

                 

A negative attitude towards education will eventually lead to a feeling of under estimating my abilities. My insecures and fears have affected my education. I have a fear of failing. I tell myself I can not complete school assignments. So I do not complete those tasks. I do not look at education as a privilege but as something I have to do. All my life I heard, education is the key to success. That might be true but I am not interested in the school work. Since this is the case, I am not as focused as I could be in school. I do not take my education serious. I would like to change my attitude towards education. I will not blame anyone to justify for the way I think. I will identify the problem. I will explain the problem. When I do this, I will better understand the problem. I will solve this problem.

A twelve step program is for people who are addicted to drugs. The first step is to acknowledge the problem and stop being in denial. I am not in rehab but the steps are similar to change my attitude towards education. There similar because a person can not force a drug abuser to go to rehab. The drug abuser must make that decision by them selves. In my case, no one in my life can make me become a better student or change my attitude towards my education. I will have to make this decision on my own. I am ready for this change. My problem is, I do not believe in myself. If I do not understand a task, I will get upset. Then I will eventually want to quit that certain task. I will admit that I have the attitude of a quitter.  When I have the whole world to blame, it makes me feel better about my attitude towards education.

My fear is that if I keep up this negative attitude, I will not complete college and will not be successful in life. All my life I heard that I will get further in life with a college degree. I want my degree but I will not accomplish this if I’m telling myself other wise. It’s ironic because I see myself being successful in life and I know I’m smart. When it comes down to actually doing the work, I start to get lazy. I tell myself the task is too difficult and I can not do it. My mentality is; what’s the point of trying when I know I do not understand. I feel like I am the only one who can solve this problem. If I do not solve this problem, I will not accomplish anything in my life. I want to believe in myself and stop my negative attitude.

        

My major is business management. Since I could remember my least favorite subject was math. Business has a lot to do with math. I want to change my major because I am scared to fail. Math is challenging. I try my best to avoid the subject. People wonder why I choose business as my major, if I dislike math so much. My mom was the reason for my decision. My mom has done so much for me and I do not want to disappoint her. She makes me feel like I can do anything I put my mind to. I don’t want her to think I’m a failure. It’s sad that another person has this much faith in me but I don’t have faith in myself. My problem is I am undecided as to what career I want to pursue. I wonder how I can be happy when I have so many negative thoughts about my education. I want to clean up my act.

         I have acknowledged my problems. I’m ready to change my attitude towards school work. In the beginning of my story, I mentioned a twelve step program for drug abusers. I have to go through a similar process. My change will not happen over night but I know it will happen. I have to take my time with school work and ignore that voice inside of me that says “I can not do it.” I have to change my way of thinking. My education is a privilege and it is my duty to never forget that. Math is one of my fears that I will over come. I will pass math and all my other classes. I have to understand that making someone else happy is not worth it, if I am miserable. If my mom does not respect my alternative career choice, than she will have to figure out a way to accept it.  Failure is not going to be in my vocabulary. I want to become a better student. Most of all, I want to become a better person.

          

Impact Bias

Danielle Baptiste

Emotions provide a motive that determines our actions and outcomes. People have the ability to over analyze their future outcomes.  Professors Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson have done studies to determine whether or not people have an impact bias. Impact bias is term Professors Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson use when people over analyze their future outcomes. What is impact bias? Why does impact bias occur? Does society play a role in our impact bias?

 According to Professors Gilbert and Wilson, the term impact bias means the tendency for people to over estimate the length or the intensity of future feeling states.  For example, pretend a person bought you, your dream home. This is exactly what you wanted and you get a feeling of over whelming joy. You think this feeling of joy will last a life time. In reality, this feeling will not last that long. People think that once they received what they always wanted, a goal was accomplished. Since you have accomplished this goal you want to celebrate it, right? This feeling is normal. People fail to realize that the celebration feeling will end and then what? The answer to this is anything that is new can become old. You will find yourself wanting something else. Your dream house is what u wanted but it’s not the only factor that can give you this over whelming joy. You can’t think that since your house didn’t give you pleasure for the amount of time you wanted, that it wasn’t what u wanted. You were wrong about the amount of time you would feel happy. The level of happiness decreased over time. The house made you happy but now you want something else. The same behavior occurs when a disaster happens. People seem to think it will take longer to recover emotionally than it naturally does. I believe that people use this as a defense mechanism, so they can prepare for the worst outcome.

 The reasons impact bias occur is focalism.  Focalism is when people focus too much on the target event ignoring certain activities that may later occupy their attention. It will impact their emotional state. People can naturally rationalize what happens to them. When something bad happens, your first reaction is to feel unhappy. As time goes by, a person will find in depth reasons as to why this happened to them. The person will start to feel better about the situation. For example, pretend you are extremely angry. You have never been this anger in your life. Someone you know comes to you and says “your not acting like yourself, go take a walk and cool off”. The reason why this is excellent advice is because you will calm down and you will realize that you don’t want to be that angry. You don’t want to be that person who scares off people with your anger. You will be glad that you didn’t hurt anything or anyone. The mind operates better in a normal state.

 I believe society plays a role in a person’s impact bias.  When a child enjoys school at a young age they will grow out of it. I disagree because when we become older, we get this mentality that when a person enjoys school they aren’t cool. This also occurs in the movies we watch. The person who receives excellent grades in school are considered a nerd and social outcast. A child does not want to be in this situation, so they act like school is boring. The child is going to think that the outcome of enjoying school is going to put them in the category of being a “nerd”. This is how society has influenced some children.

Emotions provide a motive that determines our actions and outcomes. Impact bias is prediction on the amount of time the emotion will last. Society can be a factor on how a person will predict. Everyone is guilty of doing this activity. I find it amazing that Professors Dan Gilbert and Tim Wilson have studied this activity called impact bias.