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Friends and Therapy: Two Important Keys to Happiness for Me

Friends and Therapy: So I'm feeling much better this morning, than I was last night. Which has start to become a pattern for me. If I get depressed it almost always occurs at night, and usually when I'm about to go to sleep (also weekends it almost always gets worse). Sometimes it keeps me from going to sleep because I'm avoiding the sleeping part, but then the later I stay up the worst it gets. It's a wonderful self defeating cycle. I'm reminded of my post on Discipline, and how I should just go to bed and I know it will leave me overall happier.  But that's not the topic of my musings today. Today I wanted to acknowledge to factors that I believe are contributing to an overall increase in my happiness: friends and therapy.  I started Therapy last week after finally figuring out the most cost effective way to do it (yay for virtual appointments!). And the first meeting was already a god-send. There is definitely some peace that comes from discussing your though...
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Again - Discipline????

 Discipline - May be all you need? So I had this moment a few days ago where I just got a bit fed up with my consistent unhappiness. I decided a few things that day, but the general thought I had was "I need to just DO IT already" referring to living the life I wanted to live in so much as I could control it. For me that looked like this: Just doing the work to make work feel more successful Stopping the fruitless dating efforts (dating has really contributed to some of my depression) Paint gaming back into the corner where it truly only is a "for fun" activity that fills true "free time" So, I did all those things. But the decision wasn't the important part here, it was the DISCIPLINE to just do it. The thought I had after making the decision was "I have to do this, I do. I can't rely on anyone else to change these behaviors, I have to knuckle down and change them". In the past when I've wanted to change a behavior I've tried to ...
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Happiness And Therapy

Happiness And Therapy: Today my happiness score is 2! Not doing great on that front. I just got up early again after not being able to sleep until 2. That's 2 days in a row with no sleep and I'm honestly not sure why. I just know that it seems to be my head that's keeping me up. I woke up about an hour ago with a racing heart and all sorts of anxious thoughts in my head. Here are some of those thoughts: Anxious about how expensive Grad School is turning out to be. How will I ever pay back nearly 6 figures of debt that doesn't have any inherent value like a home loan?  Thoughts of dropping out of Grad School to just start working on projects instead because MONEY.  Thoughts about how I struggle to finish projects and not wanting Grad School to be another incomplete goal.  Bouncing between those two thoughts.  Anxious about my relationship status and how inadequate I feel in that regard. Money again is a factor here. There's part of me that believes I'm only worth...
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Discipline - The Key to Happiness?

Howdy! With the holidays over I'm back to throw my thoughts about happiness around. First though - I need to check in on my current happiness score. After reviewing all the tools over the last several posts I've decided that the Subjective Happiness Scale is the best one for my purposes. It's brief, and it actually aims at "happiness" as reported and understood by the person using the tool.  Today's Subjective Happiness Scale Score: 4 / 7 Instructions: For each of the following statements and/or questions, please circle the point on the scale that you feel is most appropriate in describing  you. 1. In general, I consider myself not a very happy person 1,    2 ,   3,    4 ,    5,    6 ,   7 a very happy person 2. Compared to most of my peers, I consider myself less happy 1,    2,    3,    4 ,    5,    6,    7 more happy 3. Some people are generally very happy...
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Measuring Happiness: Pana's Scale

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Today is a quick review of another happiness measurement tool: Panas Scale As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site:  Pursuit of Happiness . Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness Oxford Happiness Inventory  (Already explored) Subjective Happiness Scale  (Already explored) Satisfaction With Life Scale  (Already explored) Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale  (Already explored) Panas Scale  (Today's Topic) Pana's Scale This tool aims to measure what the researchers call "affect" - which as I understand it just refers to your general emotions. So it doesn't claim to measure "happiness" specifically. That being the case I'm already a bit skeptical about this tool being useful for my purposes. Here it is either way!  Indicate to what extent you GENERALLY feel the given emotion, that is how you feel ON AVERAGE   Scoring   The total score is calculated by fi...
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Measuring Happiness: Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale

 Today is a quick review of another happiness measurement tool: Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site:  Pursuit of Happiness . Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness Oxford Happiness Inventory  (Already explored) Subjective Happiness Scale  (Already explored) Satisfaction With Life Scale  (Already explored) Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale  (Today's Topic) Panas Scale Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale Alrighty, so this measurement tool is significantly larger than the last two I've investigated. The full tool consists of 42 questions, the "condensed" version includes 18 questions. Each question is a statement to which the respondent indicates their agreement. I've included the 18 question version of the tool below including my answers. RESPONSE FORMAT 1 = strongly agree;  2 = somewhat agree;  3 = a little agree;...
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Measuring Happiness: Satisfaction With Life Scale

Today is a quick review of another happiness measurement tool: the Satisfaction With Life Scale As a little bit of review, these are the measurement tools I found for happiness and plan to explore. These came from the site:  Pursuit of Happiness . Existing Methods of Measuring Happiness Oxford Happiness Inventory  (Already explored) Subjective Happiness Scale  (Already explored) Satisfaction With Life Scale (Today's Topic) Ryff’s psychological wellbeing-scale Panas Scale Satisfaction With Life Scale This tool is fairly short, similar to the size of the Subjective Happiness Scale. That being the case I'm going to just include the whole thing here: Instructions: Below are five statements that you may agree or disagree with. Using the 1 - 7 scale below, indicate your agreement with each item by placing the appropriate number on the line preceding that item. Please be open and honest in your responding • 7 - Strongly agree • 6 - Agree • 5 - Slightly agree • 4 - Neither agree...
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