Tracking Your Happiness is a State of Mind

Recently I heard a story on NPR's Ted Radio Hour about a project, Track Your Happiness, started by Matt Killingsworth who is a doctoral researcher at Harvard.  The real-time survey asks thousands of participants to answer iPhone, text-driven quizzes at random times of the day, and was approved by Harvard Committee for Use of Human Subjects.  The idea is you are supposed to answer as quickly as possible to keep the responses fresh and linked to certain times of the day, perhaps tied to  circadian rhythms.  It's one of a few studies attempting to track and understand the ebbs, flows, and causes of happiness on a scale down to its dark opposite.  In real time.

I thought I'd join in.

Each time I got a text I had to stop (if it was safe) and fill out a short quiz. They popped in at all times of the day and night.  Questions ranged from charting my state of mind from very happy to very unhappy, to other more detailed requests as to where I was, who I was interacting with, did I feel lonely, did I like my job, to did I sleep well? Although I exceeded my meager text allowance for the month (causing some scrambling to change my plan), I was able to answer most of them on time.  I wonder what that says about me? Rule-following Canadian? People-pleaser? Curious subject? Hmmmm

Three weeks and about 75 surveys later when I finished Round One and was released for six months.  In that time I probably learned as much as Killingsworth about what makes me happy and the results, which were sent to me after I had completed the first round of questionnaires, were surprising.

I'm a bit of a worrywart (what is the entomology of that word??) and tended to remember these pearls of anxiety when charting my past, but I discovered during this process that my warting apparently is limited to short durations, usually right before I fall asleep, and they don't linger.  Yes, I do have crises to manage at other times of the day, for one thing being the president of a school PTO is no cakewalk, but these moments of angst are also fairly contained.  It was the act of having to quantify my feelings at random times during the day that revealed I may have emotional ups and downs, they are quixotic, intense, but not malingering.  Capturing unhappiness in my day wasn't easy.  Most of the time when asked, I felt pretty good.  Happy.

What I came to realize, the part that surprised me, is that I actually was very good at shutting down the spinning wheel of anxiety as I worked through a problem, or after a reasonable time.  I'd either solved the particular dilemma, or shelved it for later review.  I knew this to be true because when asked a mere hour later about my happiness level, it had returned to normal.  There have been certain problems that lingered in the past, but for the most part, I had figured out how to put them aside with a bit of directed meditation and a conscious choice to stay in the present. Drinking a good cup of coffee, eating one of Jacaranda's amazing scones, talking with a friend, brushing my daughter's hair, holding my husband's hand -the present is mostly pleasant.  Bingo!

I wonder what my data will reveal when added to the thousands of other results.  I now know, for example, that I often have and want to do things at the same time, because they asked about this all the time.  I think that's good.  Except for today when I came home and found piles of wet poop all over the bedroom rug, which I stepped on and tracked around like a smelly bear.  Cleaning this up was not a have-to-want-to example.  But many other tasks, like getting up in the dark to make breakfast for Sweetpea, taking her to school with my hair standing on end, toiling away at the gym, these are things I both have and want to do.  Apparently being satisfied with your life, no matter what it is, is one major key to happiness.

According to early data released by the study, entrepreneurs score best on the happiness scale - I guess being the boss has its perks, though who knows who is absorbing the unhappiness trickling down to the lower ranks who must obey and protect their paychecks.  As a writer, I'm technically an entrepreneur, or at least I don't have a boss to answer to anymore and this lack of an overseer has definitely taken one major stress out of my life.

While I was taking this survey I had to answer some pretty intimate questions about my life and because I was assured this research would remain anonymous, I tried to be as honest as I could.  Some who know me well would be surprised that happiness can thrive despite devastating turns in the road, which proves the point that being rich, famous, and living to be 101 doesn't gift you with peace of mind.  It's all in your perspective.

I consider myself quite lucky, all things considered.  Life is unpredictable and nothing illustrated this more than a short incident the other night when I was driving our homestay guest from Japan back from a gallery opening.  We were chatting away when right in front of us a car went through an intersection and was T-boned on the passenger side by another one going quite fast.  I stomped on the brakes, we both guest gasped and froze with disbelief.  He had just gotten off the plane, the father of a young baby, let loose for a short vacation before starting a new job. He was on his way to spring training in Tampa to see his favorite Japanese players with the Yankees.  He was sitting in the seat that would have been hit by the oncoming car just one short space and two seconds ahead of us. Luckily for the driver of the other car, there was no passenger in the side that was crushed and she was ok too. It wasn't until later that I'm sure all of us realized what had really just happened, or had not happened to change our lives.

We've all had our share of close calls, probably many, many more than we even know.  One close call is no different than another in my book, whether it be a scary brush with cancer or a car length away from a drunk driver.  This knowledge keeps me grounded in the present, and yes, feeling darn pretty happy, all things considered.

If you are interested in participating in the Track Your Happiness Survey, here's the link to sign up.  You may learn more than you bargained for, and I hope it's all good.

Track Your Happiness

Mongolian Invaders

Over the years we've had some pretty interesting guests stay with us.  Mostly students who are as polite as all-get-out, even a student from Thailand who insisted on washing the dishes every night and on two occasions when we had dinner parties. It felt weird sitting there chatting with friends while she labored away but there was no stopping her.  She had been raised in a rural village far from Bangkok and I think her mother warned her to be a vigilant guest lest she bring shame on her family back home.

We've hosted students and visitors from many countries, including Japan (lots of them), Turkey (the party girl who's silk delicates I was afraid to wash lest I ruin them), Thailand (all with odd names like Cake and Fame due to the popularity of English nicknames from non-English speaking parents), the Basque region of Spain (sweet but perhaps the shyest of the bunch), Malaysia (the bacon-fryer who left us with a coating of grease on all the kitchen walls), Russia (handsome and studious), and our favorite visitor, the dental student from Germany who dazzled us with her warm, open nature and excellent command of English.  Having visitors from around the world can be an eye-opening experience, but if they don't speak much English it can be a limited one.

Despite the variety of home countries we had never had the opportunity to take students from China.  Turns out not many wealthy kids from China come here to take over-priced ESL classes, or in the case of many of the visiting groups, spend 2 hours in 'class' and the rest of the day in Disneyland or some other hot tourist destination.  Mostly because they learn English with relentless energy and precision back home, and these classes must seem pretty mickey-mouse by comparison. In late 2013 I was contacted by a travel agency operating out of Shanghai as they were starting to bring students to the States for the first time.  Given that Sweetpea is from southern China I thought this would be a great experience for her and even though we very rarely accept more than one guest at a time (except the 9 and 11-year old girls from Japan who were braver than they ought to have been), I said we would take two teenagers.  Scrambling to convert our guest room from a double bed to two singles, linens, towels, pillows, etc. was only accomplished by the subtle and not-so-subtle cajoling of the husband and self-proclaimed sherpa, who dragged beds hither and thither until at last we were ready.

Alice and Catherine (their ESL class names) arrived from their home city of Baotou, an industrial mining city in Inner Mongolia.  I had to look it up, surreptitiously of course, because both these girls were braniacs and I didn't want to appear to be a provincial dolt.  Alice in particular had an impressive command of English, later I found out she traveled all over China to compete in foreign language competitions.  Not sure we have an equivalent here but apparently they love to go against each other in debates, spelling bees and essay contests.  Her English was almost flawless, with just barely a trace of an accent.  Not bad for a 15-year old.  The only problem was she laughed derisively every time we tried to repeat a Mandarin word.  She was a perfectionist so we eventually gave up.

We quickly learned that Alice and Catherine were also picky eaters, something new for us as or past students always seemed to attack our food with unbridled gusto.  Alice's reaction was more like a comedy routine: She would stare at the plate of food for a good minute or two, then pick up a fork and turn over items like they were foreign objects and then wiggle or flop them about.  Sometimes, if the first examination met with her approval, she would lean down and take a good sniff, then make a variety of faces. Luckily there was something comical about it all so we would end up laughing, despite the fact that most of her meal ended up in the garbage.  As far as I know the girls existed on hotdogs and hamburgers during their daily outings and not much else.

There was something refreshingly child-like about both teenagers and they fit in well with our family because we have let Sweetpea grow up slowly.  No torn tops and shorty shorts in 5th grade.  Nor hours in front of television showing teen dribble and teen problems with sex and alcohol, something routine among other 10-year-olds she knows at school.  Our teenage guests played a lot of games back home, cards, jump rope, mahjong, imagination play and group games in the school yard.  So very different than highschoolers here.  They both had iPhones but somehow they were more in balance with face-to-face interaction than here in the U.S.  So while they were with us we played games every night: Clue (which they loved), Mexican Train (a Domino's variation), and poker.

Some of our exchanges were surprising.  Education in China, we learned, is a wholly different process.  When Alice saw our 5th grader's algebra homework she let us know that she had studied the same problems in first grade.  At first I didn't take her seriously - it seemed incomprehensible that a 6-year-old could handle the complexity of the work our daughter was doing.  She looked through Sweetpea's math textbook with interest and declared, "they jump around too much!".  She went on to explain that they stayed with one math subject for months, repeating and repeating until it was set in stone.  "16 pages of multiplication and division of fractions," was typical of each area of mastery. In first grade. She was mystified at a system that tried to cram so many different concepts into a school year, and it made sense.

We also discovered that Alice and Catherine were having two different educations.  Because Alice showed an aptitude for math in middle school she was in the math and science track in high school.  Catherine was in the history and literature track.  What was astounding about this separation was that Alice's education no longer included history, geography, or literature.  She professed to know absolutely nothing about any system of government in the world outside China.  Catherine, on the other hand, had no math after 8th grade.  Or science.  No wonder the Chinese are struggling with lack of innovation and are accused of routinely stealing patents of every sort from other countries.  Part of their innocence might be attributed to this lack of a whole education, and it does keep graduates in the dark about many aspects of global life.  What both girls told me when I gently probed into politics in China was that they did have local elected representatives.  But no-one seemed to know exactly what they did so they were apathetic about voting.  The girls didn't seem to see any difference between China's system of government and Western-style democracy but since Alice, who spoke better English, had never studied geo-politics, this was hardly surprising.

As the week drew to a close we were sad to say goodbye and the feeling was mutual - including effusive hugging and exchanges of emails since China cannot access Facebook.  They did leave a couple of interesting parting gifts: The first was a large package of tsutai tsai, a type of salty milk tea, a staple beverage in Mongolia considered beneficial to health.  To understand just how different their palate was I made a steaming cup and took an experimental sip before choking and spitting it out in the sink.  It was impossible to force my brain to drink what tasted like a tea-flavored gargle mix.  It certainly helped me to understand why our Western dishes were so much of a challenge.  Now we're  looking for a Mongolian here to take the large bag of tsutai tsai off our hands.....

And the second gift was unintended but lasted much longer: Alice came to the U.S. with the mother of all Mongolian cold viruses, coughing, sneezing, drinking copious amounts of hot tea, Nyquil, Dayquil, and chewing on cough drops.  Like any holiday-goer, she was unwilling to curtail any of her  plans, so beginning with the 18 hour plane ride in re-circulated air she spread this horrible plague to perhaps hundreds of hapless victims who came into contact with her at Disneyland, Universal Studios, and countless other tourist destinations.  Cheerful Typhoid Alice.

In the end we were the most visible victims: Our whole family came down with this awful illness, which included days in bed, coughing fits that lasted weeks, antibiotics, fatigue, and strange bouts of hot and cold chills that sent us back to our rooms.

 As they say in Mongolia, "Sain bain uu?" (are you well?)  Hell no, thank you very much!

We won't be forgetting Inner Mongolia for a very long time.  It was a mixed blessing for sure.