#15 At the dinner table each night, write down 3 things for which you are grateful. Be specific. Do this every single night for 21 nights. This practice has been shown to turn a child who is genetically predisposed to pessimism into a lifelong optimist.
#14 Spend 20 minutes writing down any meaningful positive thing that happens to you in detail. By writing it down you get to relive the memory and it reproduces the same happiness effect as the original experience did. It actually reproduces the same effect every time you read it!
#13 Send a two minute email praising or thanking someone you know each day for three days. In studies where people did this, within 21 days their social connectedness scores went through the roof. The social connectedness score measures the breadth, depth and meaning of your social connection.
#12 Try meditation. Among its many benefits are the ability to reduce pain, lower blood pressure, strengthen the immune system, reduce stress & anxiety, help reduce anger, and decrease feelings of loneliness. In a study published in Psychiatry Research a research team at Mass General Hospital took brain scans of people before and after participating in a mindfulness meditation course. Parts of the brain associated with compassion and self-awareness grew while parts associated with stress shrank. It further reported that meditation can “permanently rewire” your brain to raise levels of happiness. So It is worth a try!
#11 Smile! It can actually change your brain chemistry. And because we have mirror neurons in all of our brains, your smile can spread to others around you lifting everyone’s mood.
#10 Go for a walk or a run. Half an hour of brisk walking three times a week has been shown to increase happiness. Exercise is especially valuable to reinforce that actions matter.
#9 Completely Unplug. Turn off your phone, iPad, computer, radio, television, and all random electronic devices for a period of time. It is great if you do this every now and then but even better if you schedule the time to unplug regularly. Turn your phone off after dinner each night. Or plan to have no internet on vacation. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement said, “The richest, happiest and most productive lives are characterized by the ability to fully engage in the challenge at hand, but also to disengage periodically and seek renewal.”
#8 Get in the Groove. People say this in lots of different ways such as “be in the zone”, or “hit your flow” but whatever you want to call it, when you are totally absorbed in a task, “it means you are being challenged and demonstrating skill at the same time” says Neil Pasricha in The Happiness Equation. Getting in the groove literally helps you feel good about you.
#7 Make conscious goals that are meaningful to you, not because they are meaningful to others. And try to achieve those goals because they mean something to YOU. Be specific and commit to working toward your goal in small but meaningful ways each day or each week. Turns out that working towards our goals helps us to be happier. In The How of Happiness Sonja Lyubomirsky says “having goals in and of themselves is strongly associated with happiness and life satisfaction.”
#6 Cultivate optimism. One way to do this is to write about the best possible scenario for your life 10 years from now. Sound corny? People who persistently practiced this strategy reported a significant boost in mood in their daily life. It prompts you to organize your thoughts and goals and commit them to paper. Optimism can motivate you and lead you to take initiative.
#5 Stop overthinking. In The How of Happiness Lyubomirsky says, “Overthinking is thinking too much, needlessly, passively, endlessly, and excessively pondering the meanings, causes and consequences of your character, your feelings, and your problems….ushers in a host of adverse consequences: It sustains or worsens sadness, fosters negatively biased thinking, impairs a person’s ability to solve problems”. She goes on to suggest that you need to learn to redirect your negative thoughts into more neutral or optimistic ones.
#4 Stop social comparison. Teddy Roosevelt said it succinctly when he said “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Basically, if you are comparing yourself constantly, you leave yourself vulnerable, threatened, and insecure. Find a way to stop comparing yourself and start taking pleasure in others’ success and show compassion in others’ failures. Take a page from consistently happy people, the happier the person the less attention he/she pays to how others are doing comparatively.
#3 Confide in or share a problem with a friend. Our need for social connection runs deep and having social support is one of the very best coping mechanisms. And as we have seen, people with strong social connections live longer and happier lives.
#2 Make some friends. Friendships do not just happen, you have to work on your connections. Create rituals allowing you to be in regular touch. Be supportive and loyal. And communicate with friends by appropriately revealing intimate thoughts and feelings. Listen, make eye contact, and do not give unsolicited advice. And lastly, hug frequently when this pandemic ends. Hugs are good.
#1 Challenge yourself to carry out 5 random acts of kindness a week and if you do it, you will dramatically improve your happiness. Martin Seligman wrote in his book Flourish that “we scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested.”