Now I'd like to introduce you to a key component of our course, the

science of happiness, and this is what we're calling real practical exercises.
These are
sort of like homework, if you will, that we're going to be giving to you each week.
These
practical exercises are drawn from scientific studies, they've been shown to lead
to increases
in happiness. I want to stay that some of them might at start sound hokey, but the
reality
is that the more authentically that you engage with them, the more genuine effort
that you
put into them, the more likely that they'll incurse some sort of benefit for you or
boost
your happiness in an appreciable way. Most of the research shows that the more
regular
authentic effort that you invest and put into these kinds of exercises, the bigger
the impact,
the most lasting the effects. You can think about it how you would think about
physical
exercise. You can't just do it once and hope that you'll be really good at it. It
takes
practice and regularity.
The first practice or exercise that we're going to teach you about it is call Three
Good Things. This exercise asks you to remember and list three positive things that
have happened
in your day so far and think about what caused them and reflect on that. Usually,
you should
spend about 10 minutes doing the Three Good Things exercise and we're hoping that
you'll
try this 4 pr 5 times over the course of the next 7 days.
We're going to give you a chance to try this right now in edX as part of the next
unit.
So go ahead, scroll down and try Three Good Things.