Kealey Meyer

Happiness Project
2/9/2017
Annotated Bibliography
Source 1

Happy. Dir. Roko Belic. Perf. Ed Diener, Sonja Lyubomirsky,14th Dalai Lama. 2011.
Citation:
DVD.

Summary: The truth of happiness. We ask ourselves this almost every day. The movie Happy
has shown us the truth of happiness by telling us many different stories. Each story taught us
something different; that we find happiness in physical activity, or having a flow for life, even just
having people around you. They all release dopamine, a chemical inside your body that makes
you happy, and once you find those things that make you happy, hold on to them.

Assessment: To me this is an extremely good resource because of the fact that it gives real
actual life evidence of people doing what they love. It gives me ideas of what I could do to be
more happy and continue to be happy so that I can live longer and better.

Reflection: The truth of happiness is found in values of intrinsic goals, flow, and living selflessly.
If you value intrinsic goals, you are living a natural life with goals to help your well-being. If you
have a flow to your life, you have the stability of a day, and you can change it to your liking so
that you can be happy. Thats not to say that you should never do anything out of the ordinary,
but have a stable plan on how to go day to day. Living selflessly also brings you joy. You may
think that it seems hard and you dont want to do it, but seeing the joy it brings to other people is
infectious, just like a laugh.

Source 2

Citation: Smith, Emily Esfahani. "There's More to Life Than Being he Atlantic.
Happy." T
Atlantic Media Company, 9 Jan. 2013. Web. 10 Feb. 2017.

Summary: Pursuit of happiness or pursuit of meaning? Which one would you choose? You may
think that they are the same thing; that without meaning we cant be happy, and without
happiness we cant have meaning. But there is a big difference. The article states that when you
are happy, you have the mindset of taking, and when you have meaning, you have the drive to
give. The article taught us that true happiness is found in meaning.

Assessment: I loved this article. It was very informative, but I also connected with it. I would
definitely use this, and though I disagreed with one part, I was able to realize and analyze why. I
can connect a lot of things to this article, and to me it is very useful.
 Reflection: When you are on the pursuit of happiness, you are thinking of yourself, trying to find
your individual happiness. You mind is set to the selfish part of you, and you try only to fill your
void with things that you like. When you are on the pursuit of meaning, you try to find your
meaning in the world by being selfless and focusing on everyone elses needs instead of yours.
You must find something that makes you happy, but also balance it out with making other
people happy.

Evidence:
1. It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness.
2. "Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even
selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or
taxing entanglements are avoided," the authors write.

Source 3:

Citation: The New Era of Positive Psychology. By Martin Seligman. Perf. Martin Seligman. N.p.,
n.d. Web.

Summary: This video was all about enforcing positive psychology to everyone. They wanted to
focus on both the people who were deemed sad and people who are happy. They decided to
focus on everyone instead on just the few people who said they need it. It explains the steps of
how they figured out this tactic, and how they carried it out.

Assessment: I feel like this was a pretty strong video to use, but I dont feel like I personally
connected with it as much as some people. I might use it, but to an extent.

Reflection: This video talked about the three happy lives. The reason there are quotations
around happy is because they are not as fulfilling as a meaningful life. There is the pleasant life,
the good life, and the meaningful life. The pleasant life is a life where you have as many
pleasures as possible, and you basically feed off of pleasure. The good life is when you have a
flow to life. Its where you have a routine throughout your days, and while that may ease the
stress of something new and unknown, that can also not allow you to feel pure joy out of new
things. The meaningful life is knowing your strengths; knowing what you are good at and using
those strengths. After the video specified each life, it talked about having positive interventions.

Source 4:

Citation: Glover, Shea. "Student Captures What Happens When People Are Told They Are
Beautiful."Bored Panda. Dainius, n.d. Web. 13 Feb. 2017.
Summary: A highschool girl from Chicago named Shea Glover wanted to conduct and
individual experiment on the reactions people have when they are told they are beautiful. She
took some students and teachers aside and took a video of them before and after she told them
Im taking pictures of things I find beautiful. The results were truly touching. This experiment
showed the little things that we could do to make other people happy, and even make us happy,
at the cost of nothing to us.

Assessment: I am definitely going to use this resource. It wasnt as long as all of the other
videos we have used, but I took something important from it. It was very strong in its own way,
and it spoke measures in a short time, which is even better.

Reflection: One of the biggest messages I got from this video was that even little things, like
calling someone beautiful, can make a huge difference. It can make someones day, and make
them smile. It can flatter them and make them blush in a good way. It also taught me that our
society is so used to putting people down and patronizing them that once we do compliment
people, they are so taken aback that they dont even know what to say. One girl in the video
even almost got violent. Some hid their faces behind their hands. Most of the reactions were
good, but some werent. That just means we need to be saying things like that more often,
because it makes people happy. It even made me happy just watching the video. I would like to
say the reactions of the kids, so that you get the full idea. Some cried, smiled, were shying away
from the attention, became happy, laughed, were surprised, flattered, said thank you, acted a
little awkward, aggressive, excited, didnt know what to do or say, didnt believe her, and some
covered their face or looked away. Most kids these days arent told they are beautiful, and now
our world is so used to this that when we are told the truth, we dont know that it is the truth.

Source 5

Citation: "Denmark." OECD Better Life Index. OECD, May 2016. Web. 14 Feb. 2017.

Summary: This website was for the purpose of finding out other countrys values and how
happy those make them. They would give you a few life values and then you would estimate on
a scale from 1-5 on how important they were to you. Then they would show comparisons of
other countries of their happiness.

Assessment: I think that this website was kind of strong. I didnt get much from it, but I might
use it later. I didnt connect very well with it, and I dont know if it is as useful as some of the
others, but I did like the comparison part of the site, and I found it interesting.

Reflection: This specific source we used made me think about the idea of values and how
happy they make us. It made me think about what I should value more, and maybe what I
should relax on a little. I liked seeing the comparison of countries and towns. I dont have a lot to
say about it because I didnt connect with it as much, but I do think it will be helpful.
Source 6

Citation: Kulraj. "Social Media and Happiness: The Unfortunate Truth." K

ulraj Website. Kulraj,
30 Nov. 2015. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.

Summary: This article talked about the effects that social media is having on us and our
well-being. It affects how we have face to face conversations, and how we interact with our
friends and family. We go on social media as a way to pass time or a way to have instant
gratification, and when we are on there, we see what people are up to, and so when we do see
them in person, there is nothing interesting to talk about, so it is harder to talk. We forget how to
read emotions and how to communicate face to face.

Assessment: This was a good resource because it really talked about the good and bad things
about social media, and I liked that perspective. It helped me understand how to interact with
people better, and all of the effects that my phone has on me. I will definitely use this.

Reflection: This was a great article. I loved the message that it had. It helped me realize a lot of
things in my life that I never even thought twice about. I really loved where he talked about that
man who had deleted all of his social media accounts because he always knew everything
about his friends and when they talked, they had nothing to talk about. I continued to think about
it afterword and I realized that it is so true, and most people dont even realize it. It made me
reflect on how much I use my social media, and my intentions with it.

Evidence:
1. ... if it were a religion, it would be the 3rd largest in the world.
2. The problem with this is that it is forcing us to consistently portray to the world a wholly
fabricated identity. One that is devoid of the balance of human experience.

Source 7

Citation: Benfield, Kaid. "'The Pursuit of Happiness': How Do Communities Make Us Happy?" The
Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 29 June 2011. Web. 22 Feb. 2017.

Summary: This article talks about how our well-being is anchored in having social connections and
feeling of connectedness. If we have these real social connections, then we are less likely to
become depressed. The other side is that if we live in low-income homes or with single parents, then
we are a little more likely to be sad more often. Only about 31% of people say that they are not very
or not at all stressed. The rest say they are kind of or really stressed. This article mentioned a part
about creating Cities of Joy, almost like a utopia.
Assessment: I didnt get a lot from this article. I felt very disconnected, and I dont think I would use
it for personal connections, but maybe for some evidence or for facts. It was a pretty strong article,
just not what I was looking for.

Reflection: I didnt feel too connected to this article, mainly because it talked about a lot of facts, but
I did like what it was saying about how we need those social connections to have a good well-being.
That is what I was looking for, and I like how they said it. That was the part that I really connected to,
and I think I will use it for this project.