Simple Exercises You Can Do To Boost Your Happiness Level

By Vishwa Prakash
http://www.thehappyway.com/

Three Good Things

Write down three positive occurrences that happened during the day, every night for one week - then for each occurrence write down an answer to the question of why the good thing happened.

Martin Seligman has devised this simple exercise focused on gratitude (a sense of thankfulness and appreciation) to yield greater happiness. At the process level it works like cognitive-behavioural strategy and as researched, is associated with greater happiness and less depression up to 3 months later.

Capitalisation

Relate and share good news with others.

Gable has conducted some compelling research to study the personal sharing of good news and how people respond to it. She uses the term "capitalisation" to describe the relating and sharing of good news and her research indicates that this act increases the positive emotion associated with the event. Further, the positive affect and satisfaction continue to increase with additional sharing of the good news. Those hearing the "good news" responded with enthusiasm and positivity and this response pattern enhanced the quality of personal relationships. The connotations for teaching to office staff as part of team building and in doctor/patient relationships are promising.

Cognitive Therapy

Challenge each negative thought as it arises, then question it to judge if the scientific likelihood or mathematical probability of the forecast disaster is actually existent and if so, to what extent.

Cognitive therapy has revolutionalised the field of practical psychology in the last thirty years, and was developed by Aaron Beck. The principle is to deal with depressing thoughts which are self-destructive and self-reinforcing. This can be done either via working with a therapist or individually. This technique of mental self-discipline has proven to be remarkably successful in treating both major and minor depression, as well as anxiety and panic attacks.

Signature Strengths

Enhance the positive traits rather than rue and mull on the negative thoughts.

This is probably the corollary of Cognitive Therapy, and focuses on enhancing the positive traits rather than rueing and mulling on the negative thoughts. Scientific research has overwhelmingly proven this to be a far more successful approach in attending to failures, both perceived and actual.

An important achievement of positive psychology is the publishing of Character Strengths and Virtues (1) which is referred in professional circles as the "manual of the sanities". The authors have identified 24 human character strengths that are grouped into six categories of virtues:

An individual may identify his or her own strengths, or through the VIA Strengths inventory at www.viastrengths.org or www.authentichappiness.org as a D-I-Y or group play exercise.  The evidence suggests that the use of one's signature strengths in an intentional manner for one week is associated with increased happiness and less depression upto 3 months later (2)

Alternatively a person can try to develop one of the 24 strengths which is not a top strength. Finally there are the 5 strengths most closely related to life satisfaction (3) - These are hope, vitality, gratitude, curiosity and love.

(1) Petersen C. Seligman MEP 2004
(2) Seligman MEP - Authentic Happiness Newsletter, 2004
(3) ParkN, Petersen C, Seligman MEP, 2004

Learned Optimism

Make optimistic attributions to real life situations as a preference to pessimistic conclusions.

Three decades of research have shown that optimism as an attitude leads to better mental and physical health, academic achievement, athletic performance and overall SWB.

Often, attributing negative outcomes to factors which are temporary and specific rather than persistent and pervasive, works wonders. As an example, let's look at someone who has been unable to follow up on a regular exercise plan. A pessimistic attribution may be "I'm so lazy" and suggests overall lassitude, incompetency and inadequacy. Conversely, an optimistic assessment might be "I wasn't able to fit exercise into my schedule because of compulsory social engagements or night classes" and therefore any dissonance is temporary and specific.

With some study (4), individuals can make optimistic attributions to real life situations as a preference to pessimistic conclusions. The key understanding here is to classify negative outcomes and situations as either of always & everything (pessimistic) or temporary & specific (optimistic).

(4) Learned Optimism - Seligman MEP 1998, and The Resilience Factor, ReivichK, Shatte A - 2002

Jeer At Fear

Practice appreciation, live proactively, recognize your strengths.

Dan Baker, author of the best-selling book "What Happy People Know" (2002), asserts that the greatest barrier to individual happiness is fear - the fear of loss (of our job, our spouse, a child, a relationship), fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of death and so on - all these which can be grouped into three basic fears:

1. survival
2. fear of not having enough
3. fear of not being enough

The amygdala is the portion of our brains where fear resides and this forms 90% of our response pattern. Materialism is a shelter for hiding from these fears, stressing people into a "life or death" need to hunt "for more, more, more - or our very survival will be threatened." Apparently the neocortex in our brain - where love, compassion and happiness are experienced - forms a small minority of our response pattern. We seem to be hardwired for "fight or flight" and only when we can through positive behavioral changes alter our primal reactions to love and compassion, can true happiness be experienced.

The practical converse solution to this is an active conscious decision to negate fear as the "first" or instinctive response, and superimpose it with managing your own emotions. With a conscious effort to practice appreciation, live proactively, recognizing your strengths and reprogramming your brain the "higher brain response" can overtake the archaic programmed fear-based reactions. This then replaces the "lesser life" with an emotionally enhanced life of love, optimism, courage, altruism, freedom from want and fear, perspective, good humor and finally a feeling of purpose and spirituality.

Other Happiness Exercises

• Practice positive affirmations
• Express gratitude, appreciation and forgiveness
• Laughter Yoga

Often we are bogged down by day-to-day failures and the active adoption of cognitive-behaviorial strategies and pursuing life goals helps by itself at the individual level to reap a large bounty of happiness. 

Thoughtful self-reflection and the mere imitation of the characteristics of the happy profile will lead to certain rewards.  An interesting site to visit is Dr. Michael Fordyce's http://www.gethappy.net , offering step-by-step teaching.

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