Happiness Exercises

While feeling stressed may be an appropriate reaction to the pandemic, fight for racial justice, and contentious election, the fact that we have powerful inner resources called character strengths can help us cope with these adversity. Here are three constructive actions your strengths can help us do in the face of today’s challenges. Strengths can be a source of hope.

In the face of the sadness and worry of the coronavirus pandemic, I encourage you to create a digital Positive Portfolio on your smartphone: This is a folder attached to your home screen where you consciously assemble artifacts, such as photos, videos, and music, that evoke memories of special positive valence.

Participants are not likely to want to listen to a workshop again. But when it is a game, participants want to play it again. It means we have another opportunity to help them internalize the idea of a growth mindset.

Today I want to highlight two compelling concepts from Happy Together that can help you cultivate stronger and happier relationships.

Positive Psychology News has a tradition of pulling together thoughts for the New Year, remembering that many people are taking stock and making resolutions. As you look ahead, perhaps the ideas below will help you find ways to make your life more happy and healthy. We also recommend that you follow Alicia’s lead and look back at 2016. What worked especially well then? What do you want to make sure you do more of in 2017?

I discovered that developing my strengths didn’t need to take more than 11 minutes each day.

If you’d some help developing your strengths habit, then join us for the next free global Strengths Challenge running from February 8 until February 12 2016. You’ll be guided step-by-step through creating your own 11-minute habit and be given free resources and access to online coaches to help you really put your strengths to work.

For several years, we’ve ended one year or started the next year by inviting our authors to make a suggestion to people looking forward to the year ahead. This year’s suggestions come in two parts. Come back on New Year’s Eve for the second installment.

Happiness is a choice, but most importantly, happiness can be taught. Join best-selling author Shawn Achor as he teaches you how to choose happiness for yourself, then multiply it by spreading positivity and optimism to others in this transformational two-part online course.

Got 15 minutes a day to become a happier and more compassionate person?

There’s now a website for that.

Greater Good in Action, an exciting new online resource is now live, offering dozens of science-based exercises to boost personal well-being.

Now I turn my attention to the practice side of the International Symposium on Contemplative Studies. Here’s a practice that I experienced at the conference and how it affected my well-being. I include step-by-step instructions for trying it out at home.

Twenty-one authors offer suggestions for living a full and meaningful 2015.

Don’t sit there too long waiting for happiness to appear, or wondering whether now is the right time to do something. Why not take a different approach? Why not act now and reflect afterwards on whether it worked? If it wasn’t quite right, you can change it, and in the meantime you will have learned something about yourself. This way, you can act your way into a new way of being happy.

Bristol is preparing to green light a range of projects that combine sustainability with well-being. One of these is a free online lecture whose theme is Sustainable Happiness, a topic that I will explore alongside Chris Johnstone, co-author of Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy. You are invited to this free event.

So what is sustainable happiness?

Today is #CharacterDay, the premiere of an 8-minute film that explores the social science and neuroscience behind character development and how we can shape who we are. Find out how to view the film and participate in the events going on today.

When they want to feel more loved, valued, respected or connected, most people give away their power. They ask (or want) others to be different, which means someone else’s behavior determines how happy they will be.
What do happier people do?

What can you do to help people understand the strengths of others? How can you help them learn how to use different strengths as lenses to see things from different points of view? Here’s one fabulous technique, adapted from Michelle C. Louis to enable people to do just that. At the same time, it strengthens relationships.

The Psychology of Spas and Wellbeing by Jeremy McCarthy offers a clearly stated, scientific investigation of the mind-body connection and the psychology of relaxation, beauty, touch, and holistic wellness.

Most of us don’t realize that we have a few central narratives running through our lives because the stories we tell ourselves are so familiar that we don’t even realize they are stories. In my work with clients, I’ve found that it’s often not the events of life that allow or prevent success in love, work, and happiness. It’s the stories we tell ourselves — and we can change our stories.

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.