Activities

Deepen your comprehension of Understanding Happiness with these carefully crafted educational exercises that let you get the most out of this TED Studies subject.

Activity 1

Work with others in your community to put on a Happiness Film Festival. Select films that explore happiness from different angles and create discussion questions that build upon what you’ve learned in this course.

As a prequel to the festival, invite participants to listen to NPR’s "TED Radio Hour: Understanding Happiness" for a quick primer on recent happiness research.

As a follow-up to the festival, a smaller group of interested community members might investigate measures that you could implement locally to increase personal and collective happiness.

There are a multitude of feature films that deal in some way with the pursuit of happiness, such as Eat Pray Love or the upcoming Hector and the Search for Happiness. Additionally, you may want to consider one or more of the following documentaries:

PBS This Emotional Life: Rethinking Happiness (Episode three)
Happy. Wadi Rum Films, 2012
Happiness Is. FilmBuff, 2009
Project Happiness. Spring Communications, 2012
Bhutan: Taking the Middle Path to Happiness. Vendetti Productions, 2007

Activity 2

Imagine you've been tapped to develop a new online dating service. How would you make use of recent research into human happiness as you create your product's features? Draft a product overview that leverages what you've learned from at least four of the TED speakers featured in this course.

Activity 3

Reflect on what you learned through Understanding Happiness. What were the most surprising findings about what makes us happy? Did it change how you perceive your own happiness or the happiness of those closest to you? If so, how? How do you think it might change the practice of a corporate manager, marriage counselor, marketing executive and/or teacher?