In last week’s blog, I introduced you to the importance of experiencing positive emotions. When experienced regularly, positive emotions make your life feel richer, more joyful, and more fulfilling. According to Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, there are 12 research-backed happiness-building exercises we can engage in to boost the frequency that we experience happiness, joy, fulfillment, etc…
Once you’ve completed the Person-Activity Fit Diagnostic. you’ll have a better understanding of which exercises suit you best so you don’t overwhelm yourself with trying to do too much at once. This quiz narrows down your focus so you’re engaging in the exercises that will give you the most benefit and reward.
To help you understand each exercise better, over these next three weeks I will provide research-based information on four happiness-building exercises (per week) that will prepare you to start developing positivity habits that resonate with you. This week I’m introducing the first four: practicing gratitude, savoring life, nurturing relationships, and cultivating optimism.
Practice Gratitude
What is it? Something you feel when you feel you have been the recipient of something or someone else’s positive actions.
- Research shows that expressing gratitude increases your happiness by helping you notice the good things that are already happening.
- Grateful people have less negative self-preoccupation, more satisfaction with life, better sleep and vitality, and more optimism.
- Practicing gratitude will increase positivity, enable savoring, and decrease stress.
Potential habits to develop:
Start a gratitude journal. Write down 1-3 things every day that you are currently grateful for – from the mundane (your flowers are finally in bloom) to the magnificent (your child’s first steps). Writing in your gratitude journal is a joyful way to start or end your day.
Savor Life
What is it? Being attentive and appreciative of a particular experience. It often involves the use of your senses.
According to psychologists Bryant and Veroff (2007), “Positive events alone are not enough to bring about happiness. People need to be able to attend to and appreciate the positive feelings that emerge from positive events.” A student in Sonja Lyubomirsky’s lab showed that the practice of remembering happy life events and attempting to replay them in one’s mind prolongs and reinforces positive emotions. I use my Pathway Planner to document happy life events through journaling and photos. I revisit these events in my journal, I feel a surge of joy every time. Savoring elicits conscious memories of a positive past, builds past, present, and future-minded positive emotions, which build resilience and buffers against depression, relieves stress and refocuses the brain.
Potential habits to develop:
- Take a picture of something of beauty you encounter and write a short text description of what you found to be beautiful about it. This is a great way to stop and take a good look at the things we admire and appreciate. Maybe it’s freshly fallen snow on trees, tulips blooming in the spring, a beach in the summer, or beautiful colorful leaves on a tree in fall.
- Replay happy days by taking “mental photographs” of pleasurable moments to review them in less happy times. Look back and replay your happiest days. I find I do this when I’m coloring, especially if I’m coloring a picture that triggers happy moments as a child, or happy moments I’ve experienced with my family. We all have these moments filed away in our minds, we have to find quiet moments to access them.
Nurture Relationships
What is it? Proactively enhancing the quality of your relationships and deepening existing relationships.
Research shows that strong social ties are the only thing that separates very happy people from very unhappy people. Nurturing relationships promotes a charitable perception of other people and the community, creates favorable social comparisons, relieves distress or guilt over others’ misfortunes, and fosters a heightened sense of interdependence and cooperation. Nurturing relationships leads people to view themselves as generous and to feel confident, in control, and optimistic about their abilities to help.
Finally, it inspires liking and friendships by others as well as their appreciation and gratitude.
Potential habits to develop:
- Plan regular social events with family and friends to connect or strengthen the relationship. I have “Pizza Friday” with family and friends.
- Think of a person who can benefit from your skills, time, and support. Create a cadence to be in touch.
- Make time to listen and to express your appreciation and affection to family members and friends.
Cultivate Optimism
What is it? A sense of hopefulness about the future. Optimism is both a style of thinking and a hopeful outlook about the world.
Having optimism provides an opportunity to gain insight into your priorities, motives, and emotions, improves self-regulation, fuels a feeling of control, improves performance, and fosters positive feelings. It creates hopefulness, and pathways to achievement, and gives you a feeling of being pulled by your future.
Potential habits to develop:
- Visualize yourself accomplishing your goals, your life dreams or meaningful life aspirations. Write about these, starting with “I am… “, and describe what it looks like and how you feel by thinking positively and optimistically about them. A good time to do this is when you’re planning your week and the activities that connect to your goals. When I do this, I feel a sense of positivity as I plan my week. Try it!
- Collect positive quotes, images, or words and put them in your journal.
Best Possible Self Exercise
Sit in a quiet place and take 15 to 30 minutes to think about and write down what you expect your life to be in a few years from now. Imagine that every day has gone as well as it possibly could. You have worked hard and succeeded in accomplishing all your life goals. Think of this as the realization of all your life dreams. Then write about what you imagined.
Keep going, keep growing…
Related posts:
Invite More Positive Emotion into Your Life
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