For my honors project, I created a vision board to reflect on my future, my values, and what will make me the happiest in life. In chapter 12, we focus on well-being and achieving a happy life. The textbook talks about the four basic components of well-being: global life satisfaction, satisfaction with important life domains, positive feelings, and negative feelings. These factors altogether strongly influence how happy we are and how we see ourselves. They affect how meaningful and fulfilling our lives are.
Global Life Satisfaction
The ‘global life satisfaction’ component is feeling generally satisfied with your life. This is basically a summarization of all the factors contributing to one’s happiness and feelings of well-being. All of the images on my vision board would be contributing to this one component because as a whole, they are the things that make me generally happy with my life.
Satisfaction With Important Life Domains
The second component, satisfaction with important life domains, refers to being satisfied with work, relationships, and family. The majority of the pictures I included are of the most important people in my life, who will always hold the most importance to me and make me the happiest. I have a picture of me and my boyfriend, who I plan to make a future with. I included pictures with my closest friends who I plan to remain friends with in the future. I also included a picture of me, my parents, and my brother all together on the beach. Pets have always been a big part of my family so I included my cat, Blossom. She will be coming with me when I get my own house one day and she provides a lot of happiness in my life.
Continuing off of the second component, I included a picture at the top of the board for dental hygiene. I will be attending ODU’s dental hygiene school in the fall and plan to start my career as a dental hygienist once I graduate. While I don’t want work to be the main focus in my life, I would like to be working in a field that I love and that provides quality of life. This profession meets all of the things I would like in a job. Two of the things I need are a set schedule and a work-life balance so I can start a family of my own.
I included a picture of me, my parents, and my brother. These are the people I call family and that I have grown up with. I plan to remain close with them when I begin my career and start my own family. In relation to families, I included a picture of a mother with a baby in the ocean on a surfboard. One of my future goals is to become a mother and hopefully share the love I have for the beach with my kids. A couple other pictures I included regarding family and homelife are a beach house, a nice beachy interior, and the Carova wild horses. My boyfriend and I plan to get married and settle down close to the Outer Banks. We also plan to eventually get a house in Carova, since both of us have grown up going there and his parents have a house there.
Positive and Negative Feelings
Positive and negative feelings are the other components. It is important for positive feelings to be the majority and negative feelings to be the minority. I included two quotes on my vision board to represent how mindset and positivity are major influences on well-being. One quote says “Your life is as good as your mindset.” and the other quote says “I am becoming the best version of myself.” Your mindset can completely change the outlook you have on your life and can affect almost all of the factors contributing to your well-being. Self-reflecting and trying to become a better version of myself each day is important to me and my happiness.
The textbook discusses stress, which is the main cause of poor psychological well-being. Stress can affect you psychologically and physically. It weakens your immune system and increases the chances that you will adopt an unhealthy lifestyle. Since stress is inevitable for the majority of people, it is very important to have strong social support. Having a strong support system has been found to reduce feelings of depression and anxiety. I am prone to feelings of anxiety and stress, so it is important for me to have my boyfriend, my pets, good friends, and remain close with my family. Another stress factor for a lot of people is finance. This is why it is important for me to be successful in college and become a dental hygienist. I would like to have a reliable job that I know will support me financially.
To conclude, I am going to summarize a few of the tips in the Positive Psychology article for helping yourself and others find happiness. A few of the tips that I find to be the most important are strengthening bonds with loved ones, sharing your feelings with a close friend, becoming comfortable with who you are, and working towards professional goals. Creating this vision board was a great way to self-reflect and envision what I want for myself in the future. It helped me focus in on what is important in my life and recognize what makes me happy. It is easy to get wrapped up in schoolwork and day to day life, so it is nice to slow and down and reflect. The vision board will be a nice reminder of what I am looking forward to and something I can continue to add onto.
