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Science of Happiness

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My personal challenge with pessimistic and procrastinating habits In the lecture, we discussed about the pessimistic explanatory style and optimistic explanatory style. These two distinct explanatory styles led completely different form of results in terms of individual performances; the discussion of these explanatory styles was previously proven with various stunning statistics. In 1987, Kamen and Seligman studied on predicted grade point average for the University of Pennsylvania freshmen. Students with overachieving explanatory style have gotten greater grade point average than those of students with underachieving explanatory style (Kamen and Seligman, presented in lecture). Intrigued by the information, I investigated my own problematic explanatory style and related negative results. I hope to identify my own behaviors, feelings, thoughts, and changes in both psychological and neurological perspectives. As my graduation-time comes closer, I had to make a big decision of my life. It was my life changing decision of whether I stay in the United States or go back in my home country. Frankly, I have already made a decision to go back to South Korea a while ago. Yet, I was often confused and nervous about the decision that I have made because of my explanatory style. Since I do not have a plan other than preparing for a graduate school from the moment I leave the school, I know it would be better for me to have optimistic beliefs constantly reminding myself, “I will be okay and I will do just fine.” However, it was surprisingly challenging because I tended to have pessimistic thoughts about my forthcoming uncertain future. Erikson’s theory with varying degrees of skepticism explains my pessimistic ways of perceiving the situation and self-doubt habits. According to Erikson’s approach called a theory of psychosocial stage, I must have developed mistrust or

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