Happiness Exercises

Bridget Grenville-Cleave’s new book is distinctly small, not much bigger than the size of my hand and lighter than a medium-sized sandwich. That may seem like a strange way to start a review. But a book that is lighter than a sandwich can go anywhere with me. So now that we’ve established that it’s an easy companion, what does it bring along? This is a book for people who want to put positive psychology to work in their own lives, or those of family members, clients, or colleagues.

In various models of well-being, positive emotions seem to have less gravitas than other factors. One reason may be that they are often equated with hedonic pleasure. So it was with great curiosity that I stumbled across a philosophical approach to pleasure that suggests that there is more to the hedonic life than initially meets the eye.

The holiday season and the New Year can be pretty stressful, but this time of year provides us with some ideal opportunities for savoring – noticing, appreciating, and enhancing the things which are already positive in our lives – and there is nothing easier to do. The rules of savoring are simple to follow, and you don’t need any special skills or equipment. In fact anyone, young or old, rich or poor, can learn how to savor and reap the benefits.

“Isn’t there a place in which we’re not positive or negative, but we’re neutral and objective?” This comment was made recently by a member of team in a discussion about how emotions, reactions, and behaviors impact team conversations and team relationships. This comment led to a broader discussion of how individuals can apply mindfulness practices to be less reactive and more constructive in workplace interactions.

Should positive psychologists be concerned that recent research based on expressing gratitude not only didn’t do the study participants any good, it actually lowered their self-esteem? What can we learn from this about fitness for purpose?

How do we visualize our thoughts, and how can we show them to other people? Often, we want to think of new ideas, or find ways to improve ourselves, and the hardest thing to do is to get a concrete conception, perhaps because we are using other people’s angles, oversimplified frameworks, and/or very basic modalities like words.

I have been anticipating Marie-Josée Shaar and Kathryn Britton’s new book: Smarts and Stamina: The Busy Person’s Guide to Optimal Health and Performance for several months now and it is better even than I had anticipated.

All of us have this constant monologue of chatter running in our head. How do our perspectives and languages habituate our inner monologue? This inner monologue sometimes is great and sometimes it is lousy. How best can we train our inner voices to be more loving, more supportive, more friendly, more forgiving, and more productive?

New research by psychologist Iris Mauss and colleagues suggests that valuing happiness itself could be self-defeating and actually lead to disappointment. They conducted two studies, one a correlational study and another that manipulated how much people valued happiness.

Thanks to the industrious work of generations of scientists, we now know a great deal about the neuro-chemical mechanisms of ill-being, including what’s behind fear, anxiety, depression, and PTSD. However psychology has known little about the neuro-chemical mechanisms of well-being until very recently. A recent study by Carol Ryff explores some of the biological underpinnings of well-being.