A Taste of Happiness: Baking Experiment Reflection - Maryssa Burkenheim

Welcome to Happiness

For my writing class this quarter, we were assigned to start a happiness experiment.  What this entailed was charting our (the students) happiness levels three times a day for six weeks.  During the fourth week we began activities that we thought would increase our happiness.  I was in a group where we all chose to pursue a passion for the remainder of the three weeks.   I debated between two of my passions: hiking and baking/ and cooking.  Since I do not own a car on campus, but my parents live twenty minutes away, I selected baking and cooking.  Two of the three weeks, I went home and baked – the first time I made chocolate chip banana bread and the second time I baked a coffee cake.  For the other week, I made smoothies.  

Activity Log

	Cooked/Baked	Time
Week 4	Smoothies, Cookies, Banana Bread	135 mins
Week 5	Smoothies	100 mins
Week 6	Coffee Cake	90 mins

Banana Bread

The first weekend that the experiment was implemented, I went home for the weekend because it was one of my best friend’s birthday.  That night we baked cookies, which was fun, but there were a lot of other circumstances surrounding the baking that made it more enjoyable.  The next day, I was still home, so I decided to bake banana bread – something I often bake when I am home.  This is something that I actually follow a recipe for, not just put pre-made dough into the oven.  I also saw an increase in my happiness after baking again.  I made sure to make two loafs, though, so that my friends at DU could have some.  I think that’s where I get the most enjoyment from, is making something that my friends and family enjoy.

http://www.thejoykitchen.com/recipe/banana-bread-cockaigne

Smoothies

The following week, three of my friends from my Creativity and Entrepreneurship Living and Learning Community and I started a business called WellSpring Smoothies.  It was assigned that we start a business for our LLC, so we made a smoothie delivery service in our residence hall – JMAC.  Tuesday through Friday, I got up early and made smoothies to deliver to people.  Although it was early in the morning – and I am not a morning person, I still highly enjoyed making the smoothies.  I think it helped that I am passionate about cooking.  However, as the week went on, the early mornings became tedious and I enjoyed making smoothies less.  I think what happened was there were too many contingencies attached once cooking became more than just a passion, it was an assignment with a lot of stress attached (keeping financial records, etc.).  

As part of my happiness experiment, I researched other studies that related to passion and happiness and I found an interesting theory: the Dualistic Model of Passion.  What tThis theory entails is there are two types of passion:

1. Harmonious “Passion: “emerges from an autonomous internalization of an activity in one’s identity. It takes place when a person engages in the passionate activity with a feeling of choice and without any contingencies attached to it. Thus, involvement in the activity is flexible and volitional.”
2. Obsessive Passion: “derives from a controlled internalization of the activity in the person’s identity. It occurs when the individual feels an uncontrollable urge to partake in the activity that he or she loves. This internal pressure derives from contingencies that are attached to the passionate activity, such as performance, self-worth, and social acceptance. Therefore, involvement in the activity is rigid in nature. The person feels forced to engage in the passionate activity and depends upon the activity.”

When cooking/baking started out as my chosen passion for this experiment, it was more of a harmonious passion, in that I didn’t have to engage in the activity every week, it was more just whenever I wanted to do it.  Once it became a weekly thing requirement (and daily activitything for the WellSpring business), there were too many stressors surrounding my passion to really have it make me happier.  My assumption

, which I make in my IMRAD, is that my passion shifted from a harmonious one to an obsessive one.  

Ariane C, S. L. (2015). Passion for a Cause: How it Affects Health and Subjective Well-Being. Journal of Personality, 1-15.

Coffee Cake

The last week of the experiment was the lowest average I had for the entire six weeks. I think this is due to the fact that I was sick that week and therefore had a lack of motivation when it came to leaving my room.  Given this fact, it wasn’t until Friday that I had the chance to cook or bake anything.  On Friday, my mom picked me up for dinner because we were celebrating my brother’s accomplishment of getting into culinary school.  I was tremendously happy for him, but also very sick.   However, we had an hour before we had to leave for dinner, so I made my famous (within my family) coffee cake. This is my favorite thing to bake because I have made it so many times that I don’t need a recipe to follow.   This also makes it so the cake tastes a little different each time, and I like that.  I don’t really think that baking the last week really had any effect on my happiness level, though. Being sick really dampened my mood.   

Wrapping Up

What I think I found throughout this whole experiment is that the events that surround my daily life influence my happiness more than this passion.  Normally, when trying to establish if I have had a good or bad day, it’s an overall look on the day, and one little event, like baking, doesn’t classify a whole day as “good.”  Looking back on the notes I left on my Mood Record Spreadsheet, where I recorded my daily mood, I found that the days, or time of day, I was the happiest was when I was doing something with friends that was out of my daily routine.  When trying to evaluate which time I pursued my passion made me the happiest, I think it was when I baked cookies with my friends because it was something we did together.  While this study aimed to isolate passion as a cause of an increase in happiness, I think there were too many other factors that influenced my life and happiness level.  If this study was to be done on a bigger scale and also remedied the external factors, I think it would be really interesting.