Effort

On top of the fit between a positive activity and a particular person, new research by Sonja Lyubomirsky, Rene Dickerhoof, Julia Boehm, and Kennon Sheldon suggests there are two other important factors which influence your chances of increasing your happiness when you carry out an evidence-based happiness exercise: your motivation and the effort you invest.

Article roughly 925 words.  Reading time 4 minutes. Three years ago, “the most wonderful time of the year” became a much dreaded time of year for me. New family dynamics…

Usually, the difficulty resides not in understanding why we should exercise, but in finding and maintaining the motivation to get it done. If you need extra help committing to an exercise routine, here are my top 10 recommendations, based on positive psychology research, to help you overcome the challenge.

On the outside, busy seems to rhyme with happy. Busy people seem successful, needed and important. Busyness is, after all, serious business. Yet on the inside, busy is often a cousin of misery. We make it through the day, run to soccer practice, shorten our night’s sleep, survive through the week, and finish off what is left on our to-do list over the weekend. It is customary to describe our workload with words like crazy and expressions like “no time to breathe.”