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Looking for ideas to brighten up the new year? Taking one of these free classes might be a good place to start.
Several famous colleges and organizations, including Harvard and Yale, have opted to provide free online happiness modules to everyone. With an electronic gadget, you can learn how to improve your health from almost anywhere.
Here are four free happiness courses to consider, all of which are available online.
4 Free happiness courses you can start today
1. Harvard University’s Managing Happiness
If you want to get to the bottom of what happiness is and how to boost it, consider enrolling in Harvard’s online course “Managing Happiness.” The online seminar, taught by social scientist Arthur C. Brooks, delves into how to live a more purposeful life and why “happiness is within your control.”
The course is self-paced, but after six weeks, you lose access to the materials and your progress. Make sure to take advantage of this offer by March 27th, since the course may no longer be available online after that date.
2. Yale University’s The Science of Happiness
Understanding happiness and studying the science underlying it is the topic of Yale’s most popular class ever. “The Science of Well-Being,” conducted by Laurie Santos, a psychology professor, is a 10-week course that investigates why the things we believe would make us happy don’t.
The goal is for you to “be prepared to successfully incorporate a specific wellness activity into your life” by the end of the course and to increase your personal well-being with the things that actually make people happy.
3. Berkeley University of California’s The Science of Happiness
Since 2014, Berkeley University in California has provided a free course on “The Science of Happiness.” The class’s purpose in eight weeks is to investigate “the roots of a happy and meaningful life through science and practice.”
Dacher Keltner and Emiliana Simon-Thomas, heads of the university’s Greater Good Science Centre, are in charge of the course. Students take part in a weekly “emotion check-in” and are given happiness-related tasks.
4. Positive Psychology – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill UNC-
Chapel Hill provides a self-paced six-module course on “Positive Psychology.” Barbara L. Fredrickson, head of the university’s Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory, discusses the numerous mistakes to avoid when chasing happiness, as well as the health advantages of feeling and giving kindness.
The course is designed to teach “practical applications” of positive psychology “that you can put to use immediately to help you live a full and meaningful life.”
In 2024, Here’s How to Feel a Little Better
Unfortunately, January has become the month when many individuals feel a tremendous desire to punish themselves. Sure, they may do it under the pretext of “health,” or even as a “lifestyle change,” but it’s typically founded in something negative: the belief that they are insufficient.
As a group of journalists who are constantly considering what it means to be truly “well,” we wanted to offer you something different and more positive for 2024: a set of gentle guidelines based on science, empathy, and our staff’s collective body of work that will hopefully help you feel a little better this year. The fact is that “good health” may be difficult to accomplish right now, especially because so many of the hurdles are systemic—but even if that weren’t the case, we wouldn’t want to burden you with a slew of regulations that felt oppressive or impossible to follow.
The vast majority of our advice for 2024 is actually about doing less: eating less bland diet food, making workouts less intense, spending less time with people who make you feel bad, feeling less guilt about not being “productive”—because we know that blaming your way to a life of abundance is simply not possible. Getting rid of items that aren’t serving you leaves room for more: More rest, more time with the people and things that energise you, more self-confidence, and more joy. That final one may seem difficult to come by, especially following another difficult year in which many terribly awful things occurred…. But it’s all the more motivation to take deliberate actions to feel well.You may not even feel good. You can, however, feel a little better. That may be plenty until 2024.
Physically, I’m feeling much better.
Make sure to schedule all of your yearly visits by the end of January.
They’re a lot more difficult to cancel once your calendar is full! Choose a day this month, prepare a pleasant snack or drink, and set aside an hour or two to book the appointments you know you’ll want to put off in the coming months: your yearly physical, ob-gyn visit, dental cleanings, eye exam, skin check, and any routine tests you require. If you’ve been intending to start treatment, now is the moment to do it. You might as well schedule your next haircut as well. —Alexis Hrustic
Track your symptoms using technology (even if you don’t know what they are yet).
Do you get a lot of headaches? Do you have persistent nausea? All of these issues should be discussed with your doctor, and frequency will come up—because there is a difference between a symptom that occurs several times a week and one that occurs every two months. Rather of guessing, consider monitoring reoccurring illnesses on your phone—Apple Health has a symptoms tool, and something as basic as your notes app can also help. Having this type of information will make it simpler for your doctor to spot patterns and identify a potentially dangerous sickness or manage a minor nuisance. Westry Green’s
While you’re about it, devise a solid method of tracking your medications.
Make a digital copy of your health insurance cards.
And then email them to yourself or save them to a photo folder on your phone that you’ll remember. Bonus points if you do the same with your contact prescription so you can quickly purchase new lenses without having to disassemble your entire house. Christina Sgobba
Try to flood your eyes with light first thing in the morning, and then envelop yourself in darkness at night.
I’ve written and edited several sleep-related articles, and two of the most important findings are that strong light in the morning (preferably from sunshine) prompts your body to get up and stay awake, while darkness causes the production of melatonin, which makes you drowsy. If you disrupt those cues by closing your blackout shades tightly in the morning or following your ex on Instagram right before bed, you disrupt your internal clock and, as a result, your sleep. To put it another way, the darker your nights are, the lighter your mornings are. —Keller, Catherine
Get rid of the bulky tote bag.
If you’re used to carrying a laptop, a massive water bottle, and/or a variety of other heavy items in a flimsy shoulder bag that places all of that weight on one side of your body, know that it doesn’t have to be this way! Packing less, using smaller bags, and distributing weight evenly between both sides of your body will benefit your shoulders, neck, and back. Alternatively, acquire a rucksack. Everyday aches and pains may not seem urgent, but lowering your burden is a simple approach to take care of yourself on a regular basis. —From Amy Rose Spiegel
Prepare your emergency illness supply while you’re feeling well.
This contains aspirin, Tylenol, Kleenex, honey, tea bags, cough drops, a thermometer, and so on. Because if you start feeling congested or fatigued, you won’t have the stamina to get out of bed and gather all of these necessities. You will be eternally thankful in the future. Jennifer Ryu
Set a calendar reminder for your autumn vaccinations today.
Don’t put off getting your yearly flu vaccination and updated COVID-19 immunisations until the first week of October; get it now. —RWM
Reward appropriate behaviour.
Why should you abandon the lollipop-after-a-shot approach once you reach adulthood? Taking care of your physical health is not a kind of self-indulgence. Every time you tick a box, reward yourself with something little and lovely (your favourite pastry, a trip to the bookshop, a self-care night, etc.). It could even make you look forward to your next follow-up appointment. —McCarthy, Grace
Simply go to bed.
I’m sad to say that going to bed early works, and it works well, as long as you’re exhausted enough to fall asleep soon. You’ll feel better the next day, and you won’t be losing out on anything by leaving a half hour or 45 minutes sooner than usual. I understand the motivation behind vengeance nighttime procrastination, but the freedom you’ll experience from declaring, “Screw it all, I’m just going to sleep”—as well as the rewards you’ll receive each time you do it—make it well worth your time. Hannah Pasternak is a writer.
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