Pursuing Your Own Happiness – Online Psychology Talk

Jointly reported by:
Lew Yuen Teng 15070 Sr3ComA
Tan Qing Lin 16632 Sr2ScB
Lai Siang Ching 17802 Sr1ComC

On the 4th of June, an open admission online psychology talk for Kuen Cheng students was held through Zoom meeting platform from 3 to 4pm. The topic was on “Youths Pursuing Their Own Happiness”. The speaker was Dr Chong Sue Ling, a child and teen psychologist as well as the coach of the school’s Psychology Club. She has shared about the importance of students pursuing their happiness in life. The aim of this talk is to help students keep an active personality and know their own value in order to maintain a healthy and happy lifestyle with friends and family.

She started the talk by asking us a simple question, “What is happiness?”. She then explained, according to psychologists, the definition of happiness and feeling blessed can be split into two parts, which are your opinion of your life and your feelings and reactions towards your daily life. She elaborated with two questions to make it easier to understand, “Are you satisfied with your life?” and “Are you happy or unhappy the majority of the time?”. She also added that the difference between feeling blessed and feeling happy is that the former lasts longer. After this detailed explanation on happiness, she gave us a small quiz, “Are You Satisfied With Your Life?”. For each question, we have to rate 1 to 5 points which would be added when finished. In the seven questions, question 3 and question 4 are contrast questions, so we have to change the points. We calculate our points and the higher the points, the more satisfied we are with our lives.

Besides that, she also tried to let us calm down and think about the two questions that had been given on the PPT which were, “What are the things that are always disturbing us ” and “What is happiness”. These two different questions. During that moment, the audience was asked to jot down the answers so they can memorise easily.  In order to provide the audience some thinking space, Dr Chong Sue Ling continued to give some deeper questions. For example, “Have you tried to solve this problem?” and “How do you solve it?”. Since the questions were clearer, the audience were more active on answering the question that had been given.

After carrying out the physiological test related to what we feel about our own lives, Dr Chong guided us through things that make us happy in our lives in order to cope with the stress and negative issues surrounding us. This is a great chance for us to really understand what kind of things that really bother us and the right way to maintain our mental health as well as to be grateful. Few ways such as exercise, setting out goals or even talking to others were found to be great for our mental health according to scientific research. Feeling blessed is not just for short term happiness. During this talk Dr Chong mentioned “feeling blessed in your life will help you to create a vision for your future.” It is because being grateful will change our perspective on seeing our goals, failures and other things in our life, which leads us to a more positive lifestyle.

All and all, Dr Chong shared with us that both happiness and blessing are defined by us, but not the others. The only way to obtain our long term happiness is to be satisfied and contented about our lives and use the right way to readjust ourselves when facing obstacles. Let’s use this time to really understand ourselves and give us a break and think – What really makes us happy in our life?