What is the key to happiness? A growing body of research points to a seemingly simple answer: relationships. The Harvard Adult Development Study, one of the longest-running studies of adult life, found that strong relationships are central to health and well-being. And in order to have healthy relationships, we often need to have a good relationship with ourselves. But healthy relationships with friends, family, partners, classmates, coworkers, and ourselves don’t always develop naturally. they need jobs.
That’s the idea behind Learning Sustainable Well-Being, a course at the University of California, San Diego and a campus-wide program that teaches students practical skills to build better relationships with themselves and others.
The program was created by Karen Dobkins, PhD ’92, a professor in the Department of Psychology in the College of Social Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, who spent much of her career as a successful visual neuroscientist. After completing her Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, she ran a lab, published papers, and won large grants. But about 10 years ago, she noticed something had changed.
I started to feel like I wasn’t acting like a scientist anymore. I went into science for the joy of discovery. ”
Karen Dobkins, PhD ’92, Professor, Department of Psychology, College of Social Sciences, University of California, San Diego
She still had strong research questions, but she stopped asking them anymore because she was “so desperate to know the answers,” she said. So she made a decision she calls “scary as hell.” Close the lab and start over in a new field.
“I was literally starting from scratch, founding a new lab, with zero reputation in a new field,” Dobkins said.
The new lab became the Human Experience and Awareness Lab (HEALab), which focuses on how humans function, thrive, and struggle. Around the same time, Dobkins created “Learning Sustainable Happiness: Compassion for Self and Others.” This course is a one-credit pass/fail course designed to help students practice the types of skills that are rarely explicitly taught, such as emotional awareness, self-compassion, honest communication, conflict resolution, and compassion for others.
This course is innovative in some ways. Because this course makes happiness simple and accessible. Rather than asking already overwhelmed students to navigate a myriad of resources, they meet students within structures they already understand. “All they know is to sign up for classes,” Dobkins said.
In a 2023 paper published in Frontiers in Public Health, Dobkins and his co-authors found that students who took the course showed significant improvements on several measures of well-being compared to students who were interested in taking a well-being course but did not take LSW. These include self-compassion, mindfulness, psychological well-being, compassion for others in difficult situations, gaining body trust, and reducing loneliness. In the post-course survey, 97% of responding students agreed or strongly agreed that the course improved their health.
This course has become so popular that UC San Diego is expanding it by training faculty instructors across campus to teach this course. This model is unique in higher education because it integrates health into the academic curriculum, rather than separating it from student instruction.
1. Stop assuming you know what others say.
Humans are hardwired to guess what other people are thinking. In real time, this is useful. If someone seems distracted, pauses, or changes their tone, we adjust. But Dobkins says the problem arises when people walk away from a conversation believing they know the other person’s intentions.
“You’ll probably have some kind of interaction with someone, whether it’s a stranger, a close friend, someone on your faculty council,” Dobkins said. “And you walk away thinking you know what your assumptions mean, even though you haven’t had a chance to get feedback on them.”
These beliefs can quickly turn into anger. An important lesson in this course is to stop and realize. I’m not a mind reader.
“It’s not about being nice,” Dobkins said. “Rather, I’m logical and I know what I don’t know, so I’m not going to assume anything.”
2. Ask questions instead of reading minds
One simple but often difficult alternative to assuming is to ask.
When someone says something confusing, seems aloof, or acts in a prickly manner, students practice moving from interpretation to curiosity. Instead of “She ignored me,” try saying, “I felt ignored when you turned your back while I was talking. What was that going on?”
“Ask someone, ‘What does that mean?'” Dobkins says. “It doesn’t mean they’ll tell me the truth, but at least I can say I asked.”
3. Share yourself honestly – but without boundaries.
Sharing our feelings honestly and beyond our limits is something we often never learn.
“It’s like any other skill, the lack of which causes great anxiety in our lives,” she wrote.
In the classroom, that means learning to speak clearly from your own experience. Instead of accusing someone of being indifferent, disrespectful, or selfish, students practice listing things they could actually know. 1) What happened (“When I was looking at my phone during dinner”), 2) How the other person felt (“I felt disrespected”), and then, if necessary, 3) Asking the other person to behave differently (“Can you please put your phone away during dinner?”).
“The only truth I know is what’s going on inside me,” Dobkins said. “That’s the only thing I can faithfully report. I can’t say, ‘You don’t respect me,’ because I have no way of knowing if you respect me.”
4. Don’t get bogged down in the details and figure out what you really care about.
When people are upset, Dobkins says, they often pile on details to convince others that their feelings are valid. But too many details can obscure the real problem.
“Stop getting into details,” Dobkins says. “You’re upset about something. Instead of trying to convince me that this person did this and that person did that, why don’t you first tell me the truth underlying all of this?”
It might sound like “I felt rejected,” “I felt alone,” or “I felt unloved.” Naming your core emotions will make the conversation more honest and productive.
“Then we’ll get somewhere,” said Mr. Dobkins.
5. Treat emotions as information
A large part of the course focuses on emotional resilience. Students learn to be curious about difficult emotions rather than rushing away from them or pushing them down.
“Emotions are information and need to be felt,” Dobkins says.
She references a long literature on the subject. From Carl Jung to Sigmund Freud, who once said, “Unexpressed emotions never go away. They are buried alive and will emerge later in uglier forms.”
Dobkins makes it clear that not every emotion needs to be acted upon or allowed. Instead, students learn how to become aware of emotions in their bodies, ask what those emotions are indicating, and respond more consciously.
6. Accept your “good, bad and ugly”
This course asks students to take an honest look at the parts of themselves they would like to deny, such as jealousy, selfishness, criticism, anxiety, and resentment. Dobkins draws on Jung’s idea of ”shadow” work, the practice of bringing hidden or denied parts of the self into consciousness.
“If it’s not, it’s in the shadows and running the show,” Dobkins said.
Students are not asked to be ashamed of these parts of themselves. Instead, learn to understand what purpose those characteristics are intended to serve. For example, a judgmental part of the self may be trying to create a sense of superiority or security.
The goal is not perfection. That’s recognition. And all humans have traits that we may not be proud of. “But that’s what makes us human,” Dobkins says.
7. Remember that comparison is the thief of joy. Hello Instagram.
Social media didn’t invent comparison, but it amplified the scale of the stage, Dobkins said. Students are constantly exposed to other people’s achievements, appearances, relationships, and curated lives.
“I think we live in a world where we’ve been brainwashed to equate achievement with value,” Dobkins says. “And that’s happening more and more because the stages are getting bigger.”
In class, students discuss how comparisons can make people feel “less than” or “better” than others. Neither will bring lasting happiness.
Dobkins says she doesn’t tell her students to never compare themselves to others again. Instead, the practice is to notice the comparison and let it go faster.
“I’m doing the best with what I have,” she said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
8. Practice compassion for those in need.
Of course, compassion does not mean pretending to condone harmful behavior. It’s about recognizing our common humanity, especially when someone is difficult.
“We’re much more similar than we are different,” Dobkins says.
Students practice thinking about whether they themselves have acted in ways that criticized others, were inconsiderate, critical, defensive, or assumed they were right. This shift can soften accusations and open the door to more productive conversations.
The 2023 paper says the course will specifically focus on what people often struggle with the most: “how to be compassionate in difficult situations.”
9. Look for unmet needs behind the conflict
When conflict erupts, Dobkins encourages students to ask the following questions: “What are your unmet needs?”
She compares it to a crying baby. Most people don’t think babies are manipulative or rude. They assume that babies need something: food, sleep, comfort, diaper changes.
For adults, things are more complicated, but the principles still apply.
“A lot of conflicts arise simply because you haven’t expressed that need, you haven’t voiced it, or the other person hasn’t voiced it,” Dobkins says.
Instead of blaming, students practice identifying the behavior, naming the emotion, and making demands.
Example: “I felt ignored when you turned your back to me while I was talking. Could you please turn to me while I’m talking?”
10. Take responsibility for your role, no matter how small.
The final section of the course focuses on everyday conflicts and apologies. Dobkins is careful to distinguish this from trauma, which she says requires different types of support. But in a typical conflict, students are asked to consider how they contributed, even if they feel their share is small.
“Even if it’s only 2%, own it,” Dobkins says.
Often, she said, students find their contributions are not being voiced. I won’t say how they felt.
“They didn’t say anything,” Dobkins said. “They expected the other person to be a mind reader.”
Learning to apologize, take responsibility and communicate more clearly is part of the course’s broader goal, which is to help students become more conscious, resilient and connected people.
Importantly, Dobkins said, it doesn’t replace treatment or clinical care. The program is funded by the Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion and is not intended to treat acute mental health concerns or trauma. It aims to teach students skills they can use to deal with everyday stress, conflict, self-criticism, and social pressure.
“Where else can you get a lesson in how to be a human being?” Dobkins said.
