Nials Bohr once stated, Accept yourself, and expect more of yourself.

Although, a paradox may sound impossible, with my happiness it perfectly is explained. To achieve a level of happiness in my eyes is to not only be able to be who I am and accept every inch of me, but to strive for improvements and perfections. I am by far perfect, but I am perfectly happy with that. One uses happiness as a value term, roughly synonymous with well-being or flourishing. The other body of work uses the word as a purely descriptive psychological term, akin to depression or tranquility. This was published in an article from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and it shows that there is so many ways to define happiness. I have found my happiness and virtues to live by, have you? When we were assigned blogs each week I didnt think that it would all correlate to this assignment. We were asked to think of ideas of what to focus on and I simply was stuck; others were writing about basketball or running and so on. I thought to myself that those things were not entirely things that I would say make me happy; I even struggled with figuring out if anything materialistic even satisfied my happiness. I decided to take it from a perspective that I knew no one would choose. I wanted to keep the uniqueness of what I focused on as well as making sure these things were relatable to others. The Happiness Project was focused on things that I could do for myself to help me be happier. One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself quoted by Gretchen Rubin in the novel, The Happiness Project. Over the summer, I read a book called The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz and it automatically hit home for me because what it discussed throughout the book were things that I was struggling with. Dont make assumptions: This agreement works towards avoiding uncomfortable situations, such as being sad or misunderstandings. Be impeccable with

your word: This agreement means to basically use your words wisely; in return it will be beneficial. You only are supposed to speak with what you mean and direct you words so there is never any harm that would come from them. Dont take anything personally: This agreement helps you understand that the actions of others have no relation to my being and that it is their decision. As I read this and applying my psychology term projection that what other people do or say is their projection of what they are living with. With following this it becomes that you will not have to feel down or pain from others, which never had anything to do with yourself. Always do your best: This agreement focuses on not harming your own self, by not judging, abusing or regretting things. If you dont always do your best you are setting yourself up for believing in failure, which in my reality there is no such thing, there are only improvements. On my website, when I displayed what my four virtues were I placed quotes next to each one. I did this because it makes it easier for the audience to understand what exactly the virtue is depicting. I chose a picture with the quote take a walk in my shoes before you judge me. This easily describes the importance to not make assumptions because we are all living different lives and you cannot pass judgments on someone, especially when you have no understanding of what it is that they are dealing with in their lives. For the virtue to be impeccable with your word I found a quote by Mahatma Gandhi that says, Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep you words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. To me, I believe that this was one of the best ways to describe the virtue of being impeccable with your word. The quote shows you how everything that you experience in life has a causal effect and if you keep your words, behavior, habits, and values

positive and true then you ultimately will live out your destiny. The virtue that states to not take anything personally I found a quote that relates to a situation of the sort, it says if you start to miss me remember, I didnt walk away you let me go. This quote is stating that they did not leave that person but the person chose to let them go; meaning that it wasnt their choice to be let go. To break it down into a better understanding is recognizing that people are going to do what they please and you cannot think for a minute that it was because of you. Even when someone says it is because of you I truly believe that it still isnt. My thought process is formed around the idea that when you do take things personally you will start to let it get under your skin and then a vicious cycle occurs of who made you feel what. Finally, for the goal to always do your best the quote that represented this states be strong, you never know who you are inspiring. I believe that this quote best fit the virtue to always do your best. It shows that you cannot let yourself fall behind in who you know yourself to be. This is because of the simple reason that you could be someones inspiration to do their best. During this semester in The Pursuit of Happiness course I was able to realize and learn a lot about myself and others. The virtues I chose were things that no one really thinks about doing, I honesty would have never thought to focus on these things in life if it hadnt been for that book. Now that I am looking back on this course it truly helped me learn how to be happier and how to live life with no worries, no stresses, and no negativity. This course also made me realize how important Positive Psychology is, which is very beneficial for going into Social Work. According to AuthenticHappiness.sas.upenn.edu, having positive psychology has the purpose of discovering not just the things that could go wrong with a person, but the good things as well. This correlates to this assignment because it points out that being happy is healthy.

Finally, you have gone through my whole process of what My Happiness Project includes, but there might be some things just not clicking of why I chose these four agreements. My purpose was to show others variety of what happiness is through my focuses and previous projects and papers. Everyone likes to put their own little spin on things and this was my own way of showing a path of my happiness. Omar Khayyam states the best thing I can leave you, the reader, with, Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

Work Cited

Happiness Paradoxes. N.p.: Happiness-project.com, n.d. PDF. Haybron, Dan. "Happiness." Stanford University. Stanford University, 06 July 2011. Web. 30 Nov. 2013. "Quotes." Goodreads. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Dec. 2013. Rubin, Gretchen. The Happiness Project. New York: HarperCollins, 2010. Print. "Using the New Positive Psychology." Authentic Happiness. University of Pennsylvania, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. "What Makes You Happy?" YouTube. Ohyesitsnico, 17 Oct. 2013. Web. 02 Dec. 2013.