I said in the title that this is going to be my final blog post but I’m not sure thats entirely true. Writing these pieces has really given me a creative outlet to express my thoughts and I’ve found it quite relaxing and introspective. I have mentioned before that I have a hard time expressing my feelings and have a hard time verbalizing what I may be thinking, but maybe that was because of the medium I was trying to communicate it wasn’t right. Speaking about things may be hard for me but I have found that writing them down and having more time to calculate what I’m saying has been quite beneficial.

Learning about happiness and how we look at and study it has been a very bittersweet topic for me. I think it is important for people to be enlightened about what makes them happy and where other people derive it from. Yet it can also be a very illuminating topic if you are not meeting your happiness goals in life. For example I spoke in a previous blog post about my career decision that I have coming up. I never really gave it the time it deserved as I always assumed I would do the thing that was expected of me and take the office job as it is what society dictates most college grads should do. I have given this much thought since last writing that post and the material about the economy of happiness by Seligman and Diener really peaked my interest in wanting to follow my passions.

When I first approached this course I was only as engaged as I needed to be to get a passing grade, but have found myself enjoying more and more the reading material and actually looking forward to completing them. When you take a vested interest in a topic you are learning about you seem to be more connected and enjoy it more. This has been one of my favorite learning experiences. I now realize that living a happy life is not something that comes easy, there is a lot of self exploration and decisions you have to make to get there, but when you do, everything is worth it.

Another thing the this course has taught me is that there is no person in the world that maintains happiness. It is not a permanent fixture once it is obtained, but if something an individual has to work at to maintain. Subjective happiness is an exercise that you have to work at to gain strength in.

I would like to thank Dr. F for such a great course, and helping navigate me through the science of happiness. I am grateful for her help and support these last few weeks. To end this blog thread I want to end with a quote,

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” 
― Mahatma Gandhi

Happily,

Bryce Wojciechowski

I have to include in my blog something about Elon. After all it is the reason why I am taking this course and learning as much as I am. Elon was one of the defining moments of my life and although it took me out of my comfort zone in ways I could never imagine it has formed me and provided me with life lessons that I will forever be grateful for.

In this course there is a recurring theme surrounding personal relationships and how they play into a personals overall well being and happiness. I entered Elon from a completly different country, knowing absolutely no-one, and having no previous relationships with anyone in the student body. Another thing that caused me trouble is that I’ve never had to make friends before. Growing up I went to school with, lived close to, and spent my time with a group of friends that had been part of my life even before I could remember. I can say that I knew happiness and the idea of change scared me and didn’t instill any happiness.

Yet when I got to Elon I was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t at first find a group of friends that I fit in with, but over time I did and became a happier and more fulfilled person. Additionally, I found that as I found people that I liked and started to enjoy spending time around I started to branch out socially because I was happy. It was almost as if the initial happiness threshold that I crossed almost led me into taking advantage of more of the opportunities that Elon had to offer. This tied into some of the material this week and I thought it was worth sharing my experience through my blog post.

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I have just completed my self-evaluation for my paper and critiquing myself was something I found very enjoyable. Not only was I able to look at my writing from an outside perspective and about a topic that I am very passionate about, but was able to try and separate myself from it and see it from a person who has never been to Bermuda and knows little about it.

This brought me to the train of thought of how much one is affected by where they are from, and how that affects their happiness. I started thinking about people who I’ve met who could not wait to get out of their hometown and away from their parents and realized I could never empathize with that. Coming from Bermuda I have always had great pride and happiness about where I come from, not because it is ‘Unique’ as most put it, but because the values that are instilled in the population here are admirable in my opinion. Of course Bermuda is like any other place in the world and has its faults, but there are many things about living here that I take for granted on a daily basis that are attributed to my subjective well-being and happiness.

One is the strong family bond that is formed here. Whether you live with your parents or not in Bermuda you often find yourself hearing from friends that they have to go to Donner with their family, or that they have to go on an outing with their family. This isn’t said with resentment or can be connoted negatively, just acceptance and expectation. This is something that I think is so special about Bermuda, that from a young age we are taught to value our families and make time for them no matter what the cost. I cannot speak for everybody but I have noticed that this is something that is very Bermudian and something I am very proud of.

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As I navigate this course , as well as with the more I read I find myself being grateful for the lessons that I am learning. My first blog post was about how people should be more active into changing their wellbeing, and I could not agree more. I have looked at this subject more closely and honestly feel like I know less that I did then when I started.

The first reading of this course I think is the most important. When it is stated that happiness is a subjective view of well being, a student will not really appreciate the gravity of that statement until they delve deeper into the course and start to see the immense weight of that statement.

I started to think the other day in a rather exestensial matter that I thought would be very interesting to include in this blog post. The question that I pondered was, does a person know when they are truly happy or their subjective wellbeing is at a high level? This thought crossed my mind because when I look back on my own life and I think of incredibly happy times, I didn’t understand how happy I was in the situation or time until it ended. Does one know when they are happy or does it hit them when they have left that state of happened and defended into a less fulfilling point of their life and that is where they realize how god the times where. “You don’t know what you’ve got until its gone,” is the cliche that springs to mind in this instance, but I want to leave this blog post open ended to spur a little food for thought. Begging the question, have you ever realized how happy you where in a situation whilst you where living it?

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I am very lucky to come in contact with a plethora of people through my job. I am currently working on a sailboat and the most exciting thing is that you never know how is going to walk aboard when you pull up to the dock.The person I took out today had a profound impression on me hence why she is being included in my blog. Her name was Jane and she was a travel blogger from New Jersey. She told me about how she used to have a 9-5 job in New York, then she started a blog and it changed her life.

I told her about how I was attempting at putting my thoughts on a page through this blog, and she really bought into what I was telling her. I also was intrigued. She explained to me how she followed her passion of travel and decided to turn it into something that was generating revenue for her. She talked to me about how her passions and her loves, and what she derives happiness from outgrew (whether intentional or not) what her career path was. Which I found admirable. In my last blog post I take about the personal battle that I currently find myself in and this conversation really enlightened me to what endless opportunities life throws at you.

Jane never expected her passion project, and something she did on the side just to take a hold on her life the way it did and send her on a tangent towards something that she never imagined. From this conversation I learned a few things, one is that you never know wha tif going to happen, if yo follow your passions and realize what makes you happy then the opportunities are endless. Two, it made my decision harder come September, follow what I love or do what I think is right because of the pressures I feel. Stay tuned!

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My summer job has caused me to think about about happiness as well as how I define happiness. I have let Elon and have been out of school, and have to take this course as the last box I have to check to get my degree. I studied international business in college but my summer job is as a sailing crew on a boat. It is my dream job and I love everyday and have come to find that I wake up easier because I love what I do.

Yet I recently interviewed with a large reinsurance company on the island for a graduate program that closely relates to the job that I would use my degree doing. There are travel opportunities tied with this position that is a huge perk, as well as benefits and insurance. Yet I have done this type of work before and have not found the same happiness in doing it.

The personal battle that I am currently in is whether to stick with a job that I love and that has been a great thing for my life, or go the route that my parents expect out of me as well a the degree I have obtained. This is a big decision that I have to make, and as of right now I will be taking the office job in September. This course has opened my eyes to the things that make people happy and how happiness is not measured in money and status but the subjective well being a person feels. I think that later down the line my subjective well being and mental happiness will revert me back to the boat but as of right now the office is winning the battle in what is the next step for me, yet there is a chance that my passions will prevail.

I have had some trouble creating a blog post for the last few days. The most recent discussion board has given me quite a bit to talk and think about for this blog post. The discussion board was regarding a letter of gratitude to someone who deserves it. It was one of the most rewarding tasks I’ve completed in a while. I had trouble thinking about who I was going to write to but I am glad that I chose my mom.

As I’ve grown older I have found it harder to articulate my feelings towards my family, and I’m glad I was afforded this opportunity. I think it is because I have been eager to take on a more mature persona and expressing feelings is for some reason in my mind a juvenile thing to do. Yet, I think my next big epiphany will be that that is a foolish thought to have. As I grow older the one thing that I’ve realized is that life can be very unpredictable, and as bad as it sounds you never know what the next day will bring. So this has allowed me to bring those two thoughts together and realize that I should speak my mind about the feelings I have towards the people that have always stood in my corner, as you never know what the next day will bring. It is a hard realization to come to but as time goes on I think affording some thought to the hard subjects will be very transformative.

If theres anything I’ve learned through this course, and I mentioned it in my last blog post, is that more often or not it is people and relationships that are closely linked with happiness. I look forward to completing my blog in the last days of this course as I think I will more matured ideas to share because of my experience with the material, and it will be a more illuminating experience rather than if I started writing these earlier.

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I have really started to look more into my research paper topic and thought it would be a good starting point for this blog. It got me thinking, what is the point in studying any subject matter if you don’t somehow use it or relate it into your life. I think that the subject matter of happiness is the perfect example.

It is often said that money can’t buy happiness, and I always would say, “Yes but money makes certain things that cause unhappiness go away.” I have thought about this and the outlook on happiness I’ve had, for quite some time now, and didn’t really have the material to justify my thoughts or compound upon them until this course. Although I haven’t found the answer I’m looking for quite yet, I believe that through the willingness to learn and see what aspects of this course can apply to my life, ill start to see a picture forming in the cloudiness.

The topic of my term paper is also calling into question my preconceived notions of happiness. What aspects would enrich my life more? What public policy could a government implement to increase wellbeing within the community I’m in? I don’t currently have the answers to these questions, and I think if you asked 100 different people, you would receive 100 different answers. One of the beginning readings mentioned something that has stuck with me through the first week of this course and has really defined how I look at it. That was that happiness is a sense of ‘subjective wellbeing’, which I find very intriguing. Happiness means something different to everybody, and I think that is something everybody should realize as well as learn about.

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Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton