11/28/2018 4 Comments Research Project: [three good things]I am still working on my findings section but this is the new flare I have added so far. As I develop more content I will post more stuff. This is the second draft of the findings section for now, more to be revealed...
I genuinely believe the happiest people in the world are the ones who display gratitude in their everyday walk of life. The people who volunteer their time to help the less fortunate set a standard that leaves a lasting legacy on this earth imagine every day we all did something nice for a stranger?
control in a sizable random-assignment experiment, and found that two interventions—writing about three good things that happened each day and why they happened, and using signature strengths of character in a new way—made people happier (and less depressed) up to six months later” (Postive Psychology Progress). Like any testing, there is nothing that is 100%. When dealing with happiness and how you approach so many outside factors can skew the results. They are relying on pure honesty and not getting results from those around them about their behavior. The researchers concluded, “Therefore, we conclude that this exercise is not an effective intervention, at least not in isolation. Measurement of positive states needs more research. Even though individuals may be the best judge of how happy they are at the moment, they may not be accurate historians concerning when and in what types of situations they were happy in the past. One challenge for researchers is to develop better behavior-based, domain-specific assessment tools. We suspect that productivity at work and physical health follow the same patterns as subjective happiness, and we will welcome the day when scientific productivity and health measures supplement subjective happiness measures” (Positive Psychology Progress). “The only source of knowledge is experience,” Albert Einstein. There is no more celebrated teacher about the experience than life itself. I have had monumental life changes that have indeed affected how I look life in general. Every time I walk past a homeless person, desperate child, or any person suffering from substance abuse disorder it immediately helps me to be grateful for where my life is at today. Before my wife walks into work, she passes people sleeping on grates every morning. How this affects each person is different. When I made changes to become a sober and better person I quickly learned to write a daily gratitude list because it helps fuel my positivity. As I wrote each day, I noticed how much I had to be grateful for which forced my thinking to focus on what I had instead of what I didn’t have. I believe this help in turn each change my focus on the goals I wanted out of life and that passed onto the people I attracted. Living a healthy grateful life contributes to a cycle of healthy lifestyle choices. When I look at the most miserable and negative people, I see a common trait if being ungrateful. Every day I think most people take the simplest things for grant it. Even when I bring up being grateful, they leave the conversation or become very angry. I feel as if we have a society of never enough. If we are all content with what we have and try to push others to be that way we could seriously change the crime rate. How many families have been broken because of not being grateful for what they had? Careers are made for people seeking a divorce, IRS audits, and even the tv-show American Greed displays how we in a world of being ungrateful.
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11/28/2018 1 Comment Research Project: [three good things]I have always been told that two brains are better than one. As I have gotten older, I truly believe that with the life experience I have witnessed. Tuesday class was a perfect example of how multiple people can truly uplift a person’s writing. I highly assumed that my work would be bludgeoned with institutional critique and a red pen. What I found was the exact opposite and also that I am not alone in the difficult process of creating a masterpiece. I believe there are millions of people with great ideas, but yet they cannot figure out how to put pen to paper. I think that is what separates the greatest writers because they can articulate that so well. I believe that is why the spider web formula was always taught to school children so they could get their ideas out on paper and not feel so overwhelmed. That also leads me to why outlines are so heavily taught in schools because it reduces the burden of putting everything together. As I read my introduction, I began to have a stronger belief in how the paper started. Honestly, I hate how short it is because I feel I had to be so concise. I have always had the problem of understanding that sometimes less is more. I have always felt that starting anything off with a quote is a great way to get the readers attention. The first line of any story must hold a tremendous amount of power to get the reader’s attention. When I write I try to put myself in the reader’s shoes and think outside the box. Who likes to waste time? What can be worse than a 300 page boring, bad, and lackluster book? Our world is built off of marketing and catching the eye of people. I always view my writing as every line get their attention because I do not want to lose. The goal for the rest of the paper is to keep the audience hooked, and the deliver what I promised in the introduction.
“To whom much is given, much is required,” Proverbs. That is not just a saying that is a way of life even when I write. I have been given the talent to write, and I have dealt a substantial introduction. Now I must finish with a productive and informative paper that delivers a mind blogging message of gratitude. “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it,” William Arthur Ward. As a child I was always taught gratitude is an action word and life experiences have born that be ultimately true. Throughout this research, I explore how the daily process of a “three good things” gratitude list has an immediate impact on my well-being. I will present evidence from leading experts on positive psychology, life experiences, and overall support the claim that this gratitude process indeed has a positive impact on lives. I have found a way to have a healthier and more productive life, and I want to show my gratitude by sharing it with you. 11/17/2018 3 Comments Research Project: [three good things]When I first saw the question as asked by our professor, “Can the “three good things” gratitude process have a positive impact on my well-being?” I immediately thought to finds medical research focusing on the brain. As I have become older, I have become much more about science because people tend not to argue that and characterize that as fact. Since this paper, is asked to be written as an argument. I figured published studies from elite ivy schools such as Yale, Harvard, and Oxford would suffice as robust and credible evidence. However, there is no teacher like experience. The beauty of this assignment for me personally is that I happen to live this outside of the classroom. I can interject my findings and evidence as lived along with what research suggest as accurate. With a topic like this, a study can only add to the personal experience. I am apprehensive about the formatting from MLA, how much source to use and overall the intricate details of what is needed to be correct. The professor was kind enough to give us all the references we needed which for me has always been half the battle. Now it is breaking those sources down and fitting them into my story and how this process affected my life. These blogs add a dynamic that creates for a plain paper in that I explain my process. Never before have I put my process on paper as to the who, what, when, where, and why of my writing.
In semesters past, I have always used a spider web when developing topics. Another good note about this paper is that those topics are already laid out for us. I plan to start with a quote that wakes the reader up to the seriousness of the article. I may even travel down the path of mental illness to talk about the importance of well-being. Being a person with mental illness and on regulated medications, I can speak about a dominant genre concerning how this all ties together. The more I write in this blog, the more of my voice for this research paper I discover. One of the blessings about writing is that it can live on forever and always be reevaluated. When I venture into past journals dating back to high school, I see my tendencies of thought. I look at my flaws and my positives I honestly had yet to discover. A daily diary of three good things can tell you a lot about a person from a heart standpoint. What I may find valuable in my life may be different from what you view in your life. I am curious to read the findings from scholars about the daily journaling of this type. I am anxious to see the break down of studies and the audiences they targeted. It is also essential to understand how other classmates found this exercise to be in the form of a research paper. This assignment has the potential to open me up and create a real blog for those in search of happiness. As I have stated before, I decided that college could ever change my bank account or change my life. This assignment indeed has the potential to do both and most importantly improve the way I view my life. The last meaningful assignment I wrote ended up being published in the Inquire. The proof is in the pudding, writing honestly can open your life to blessings you never saw coming. 11/12/2018 1 Comment Research Project: [Regrets]What an assignment. This writing process revealed so much more to me that I would have never known about my life in such a short time. “Only way to survive is to learn to live with regrets,” Shawn Carter. For over a decade I beat myself up over a horrible decision I made that lead to years of dysfunction with my mother. Therapy is so undervalued in this world because this writing assignment turned out to be just that. Years ago a therapist suggested that I wrote down this incident to fully understand what exactly happened. I will forever wish I would have listened to that advice. The more I began to write the more I began to realize how unhealthy my life at that time was. Yes, I had unaddressed alcoholism and mental illness.
However, my home life was utterly nonspiritual. I was living with a mother who struggled with mental illness and had control issues. I had no idea at the time what I was honestly dealing with, and until I broke apart my story, I still did not realize it. I began with the first draft telling the story and having an enormous amount of regret. Then in the second draft towards the end, my mother’s behavior started to come to the surface. As I struggled tremendously to write the poem, I started erratic behavior from my mother. At the time, I would have never caught this because I was so entrenched with my immaturity. I never took the time to realize how important our relationship was to the overall spiritual aspect of our home. I thought by making money and developing status in the world that would solve my issues with my mother. Not only was I wrong but I found out through a harsh lesson. As I got to the last drafts, I remember the feeling of being in my best friend’s house. I remember how lost I felt thinking my life was entirely over or at least changed in the hardest way. Being evicted from my home was the best thing that ever happened to me because it helped me develop as a man. It taught me how to survive and no longer depend on my mother. I cannot imagine if I would have been in the middle of the semester or needing to rely on her. It was not until years later that I even realized I had a problem, so there were still growing pains I had to feel. I believe that two things can be right. The truth is I was a child in brain development with significant issues, and also my mother was unstable with mental illness. You combine that with low income and steak appetites that is a recipe for disaster. The therapist suggests that you journal every day to see your thinking and how far you have come. Writing five drafts of my story was the same process because it revealed new information every time. I have taken this information and begun to implement in my relationship with my mother. I cannot solve a problem without understanding the root of the problem. I am forever grateful for this writing process because it taught me to break things down in different ways and understand it in different lenses. This is the most objective I have ever been about any situation in my life and it worked miracles. 11/6/2018 2 Comments THANK YOUThis blog is for everyone in the class. I just want to personally thank each of you for the humbling comments and positive impact on the class. This semester enlightened me to a lot of things about the world and college in general. I do not have a lot to say but I do just want to say thank you, I am a better person for taking this course and having this student body in my life for the past three months, BE BLESSED!
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December 2018
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