Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

This post is a follow up to my previous post. If you need another reason to actually sit down and take the time to find what truly makes you happy and define your true calling- watch this video. Yes, I know it is an hour and fifteen minutes long but you will not regret watching one minute of it. I challenge you to just watch the first five minutes, if you are not hooked within that span of time; feel free to turn it off. But if I was a betting woman, I would say you will watch it from start to finish. Enjoy!

Exploring Happiness

This fall I have begun my graduate studies at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, where I will apply myself to the earning of a Master of Arts in Leadership (MAL) degree. I recently had to write the following short essay and I thought I would share it with you all. I think each of us should take some time to explore what it is that makes us happy! 

Over the past week I have learned that happiness is very subjective. Throughout history many different philosophers, including Buddha, Confucius, and Abraham Maslow have written on the topic of happiness. Much research is still being conducted today and one of those theories being test by the U Penn Authentic Happiness Center (2012a) is how the three approaches to happiness: a pleasant life, an engaging life and a meaningful life, all work together in each of our lives. This essay will be an exploration of what role each of these three approaches to happiness plays in my own life.

A pleasant life is the enjoyment of the more superficial parts of our existence. According to the Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire this approach is of the least importance to me. However, it is still an essential part of my overall happiness. I know I would not be as happy in my life without the material things. For instance when Cole and I bought our first house, we were so excited and could not wait to share it with our family and friends. Up until this point we had lived in a 500 square foot apartment, and while we were perfectly content and happy there we were even more excited to have our own home. The first thing Cole did was walk around with a video camera in our new home and post the video to the web for our families to see. But this excitement was fleeting. Now that we have lived here for three years, while we still love our home and it makes us very content, we discuss at least once a week the features of our next home. We get overly excited about the possibilities that it may hold. I know this house will always hold a special place in our hearts, because it was the first, but there will always be the next thing to be excited about too.

The engaging life is by far the most important approach to happiness for me. On the Approaches to Happiness Questionnaire I scored in the 85^th percentile compared to others who had taken the survey. Life is made engaging by putting to use your signature strengths in your work, friendships, love and leisure. Through my involvement in Thomas Morgan’s class, Leading Authentically, I have discovered that my four dependable strengths are that I am disciplined, trustworthy, responsible and optimistic. I have crafted my life in such as way as to put these strengths to good use. In 2010 I gained my official title as a coach at Augsburg, but I had been coaching unofficially for years. I started my coaching experience with my mom. My mom is a supermom, always there for her family even if that meant neglecting her own health. So after 10 years of essentially not exercising at all, she hit an all time high with her weight and was visibly upset with herself about it. So I took my four strengths and extensive knowledge of running and got her to be active again. It was not easy, especially at first. At the time I was in college living 2,000 miles away from her home in Knoxville, Tennessee. So I could not be there every day to see if she got out the door for a run. We started small, alternating between mostly walking and a little running. However, I had to call her on the phone every day to make sure she did her run. Much of the time this phone call would end with a disappointing “no”. But I did not let these small failures curb my enthusiasm or hers. Two years after we started this quest together, she ran her first marathon, of which I ran 17 miles with her. Today, she now runs a few marathons a year and does the training on her own. She has completed six marathons to date with the goal of doing one in every state! It is accomplishments like this that give me everlasting joy and help make my life complete.

The meaningful life is the use of the same strengths that I mentioned above in service of something greater than myself. To me coaching is that something. I believe sports, especially running, are a vehicle to teach people about themselves and society. Sports help with both human and social development. They can contribute to social cohesion and tolerance, as well as be a conduit for physical and socio-economic development. Furthermore, sports – like music and art – are a universal language which can be used for social and economic change by bridging cultural gaps, helping to resolve conflicts and educating people in ways that nothing else can. I believe that by being a coach I can help guide people in a way to make a meaningful impact on their lives both physically and mentally which brings great meaning and fulfillment to my life.

The three approaches to happiness – a pleasant life, a engaging life and a meaningful life – work in unison to make my life happy. While some of these approaches are more important to me than others, without all three being in balance I do not think I would be as happy as I currently am. I feel very lucky to have found a passion that I believe in and the means with which I can share that passion with the world.

U Penn Authentic Happiness. (2012a, September 15). Approaches to happiness questionnaire. Retrieved from http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/results.aspx?id=266&it=0