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How can I become more aware of the positive things that happen to me?

August 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Answer:  Practice this recall exercise every day:

Try to recall in just 2 minutes 50 positive things that happened to you in the last 24 hours !


I got this idea from a from an article Build a Positive Attitude With the 4 Day Attitude Diet by Dr. Alan Zimmerman. He suggested:

Keep a journal and write down 50 wonderful things that happen to you on Day 1. Include even small things… like finding a quarter on the sidewalk… or a stranger greeting you with a cheerful “good morning.” After awhile, you’ll realize that most of the things that happen in your life are positive.


My exercise of coming up with 50 positive things that happened in the past 24 hours in just 2 minutes isn’t easy–but I reckon it’s  definitely do-able. And if we did the exercise every day, it must help us develop a healthy positive outlook.

I tried this exercise out on myself just then and managed to come up with 25 good things in about 5 minutes. I presume I’ll get better with practice! It’s a bit like one of those games:”See how many words can you think of starting  with “S” in just one minute?  Or “See how many uses for a brick can you think of?”

In this positive recall exercise, however, instead of training our brain in fluency or creativity, we’re training it to be more conscious of the positive stuff that happens to us.

Why don’t you try it right now and see how you go? Then do it every day to see how long it takes before you can effortlessly think up 50 positive things in 2 minutes?

Just to show you what I mean, here are the 25 positive things I recalled happening to me in the past 24 hours: (When you do the exercise, you wouldn’t write down all these words–you’d just need to write down one or two words for each thing.)

  1. pleased movie time was a good one
  2. pleased to hear about how our daughter is going with new job
  3. pleased with the omelet I cooked us for dinner
  4. pleased my husband is happy about us doing an interesting-sounding course for next few Monday nights
  5. pleased it worked out everyone could go to movie last night
  6. really enjoyed going to movies with  our friends last night
  7. pleased we got to movie on time
  8. pleased we got good seats and could sit together
  9. enjoying the movie a lot (Red Dog!)
  10. enjoyed having ice-creams with our friends after movie
  11. enjoyed our conversation with friends
  12. enjoyed receiving email from my brother
  13. felt pleased he enjoyed the article I sent him
  14. pleased I lost half a kilo in my morning weigh-in
  15. pleased I did my stretching exercises
  16. pleased I got to 5 -back
  17. pleased I got to 35 ( a PB!) on another brain game
  18. pleased I accomplished lots of things on my goal tracker
  19. enjoyed my walk
  20. pleased I did well with my mindfulness on walk
  21. enjoyed getting some sun
  22. enjoyed going on the new path
  23. pleased I ticked off so many of my goal-tracker tasks
  24. pleased to get email from M-I-L
  25. pleased I solved the riddle she sent me
  26. pleased with the stir fry I made for lunch
  27. enjoyed the berries and yogurt
  28. pleased the phone call from tax office was a scam!
  29. enjoyed fun phone call from my husband
  30. pleased for him that he got some more grant money
  31. pleased with my meditation session
  32. enjoyed reading  book on mindfulness
  33. enjoyed reading up on positive aging
  34. enjoyed my afternoon siesta
  35. enjoyed dog cuddling up with me
  36. pleased with my positive mood all day
  37. pleased I stumbled across this positive thinking exercise
  38. pleased it worked so well and that it looks like a “keeper”
  39. pleased I finally did something about the Pilates voucher

That was interesting.  I managed to think of another 14 things while typing up my original 25 ideas!

I’m pretty sure this will get a lot easier with practice, and we could all easily think up 50 tiny good things that happened to us during the day.  In fact, I think doing this exercise every day would make us more mindful of positive events as they happen. We’ll say “That was enjoyable. Must remember to include that on my list when I do the recall exercise.”

And by recognizing an event is enjoyable as it happens means we enjoy the event more–all that mindful savoring!  And, of course, the act of recalling enjoyable events means we enjoy the events all over again by re-living them in our mind!

Wow!

________

The next day:

I tried this exercise at the end of today and managed to think up 30 nice things that happened to me today in about 4 minutes. I was pleased with that effort, considering nothing much happened in my day today. I was definitely more mindful during the day, thinking ” yes, this thing will count as a positive event”. I presume I’ll get better at “catching” positive events as I practice. I think it’s definitely a good high-yield exercise.

———–

And then the day after that:

This time I thought of 32 things. It took a few minutes. Again, I was conscious during the day of thinking “This is fun. I must remember to count this”.

Filed Under: dialing up positive emotions, emotional, how to be more mindful of positive things that happen Tagged With: , , ,

how to increase positive emotions — short videos explaining proven exercises

June 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Gratitude Visit™ exercise is a powerful tool for increasing life satisfaction because it amplifies good memories about the past, and it forges a very strong bond with an important person from your past. The goal of this exercise is for you to experience the power of expressing your gratitude to someone who has touched your life.

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Martin “Marty” Seligman, father of positive psychology, discusses his happiness intervention (exercise) “three good things” (also known as “three blessings”). The scientifically-tested happiness tool was made into an iphone application by happier.com. The happiness iphone application is called “good things” and is available on the apple itunes app store and through happier.com

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 Three Blessings™ is designed to increase your life satisfaction and to sweeten your memories about the past. It has been determined in well designed research studies that becoming much more conscious of good events reliably increases happiness and decreases depression.

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Keeping a gratitude journal: 

Demonstration vide of the $0.99 iPhone/iPod Touch application from happier.com: gratitude journal.

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Active & Constructive Responding is an example of a Happiness Exercise by Dr. Martin Seligman from the Reflective Happiness Web site. This exercise is intended to help you respond actively and constructively to positive events reported to you by others.

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Filed Under: dialing up positive emotions, emotional, short videos explaining the exercises for lifting positive emotions, what exercises are proven to lift my positve emotions?

How can I lighten up more and not take life so seriously?

May 8, 2011 by Leave a Comment

1. Apply this checklist next time you feel “all het up” about something:

 

  1. Is it really worth getting upset over?
  2. Is it worth upsetting others?
  3. Is it that important?
  4. Is it that bad?
  5. Is the situation irreparable?
  6. Is it really your problem?

(from Laughter is the best medicine: the benefits of humor and laughter, an article from helpguide.org. )

2. Apply the “significance test” to what is upsetting you so much:

Will I even remember this  annoyance:

  • next year?
  • next month?
  • next week?
  • tomorrow?

Most of the things that distress us so much are barely remembered later on. Prove this for yourself:  

For the next week, write down all the things that cause you distress. Then, every now and then over the coming weeks, read through your list and see how you feel about these things, now you have a bit of emotional distance from them.

You’ll probably find taht, given enough time,  hardly anything continues to score highly on your  “Angst Richter Scale”.

I’m not saying that we should never get upset when some service provider is incredibly rude or incompetent, or when we get a speeding fine in the pettiness of circumstances, or  our friend shows incredible lack of empathy at a time we badly wanted it, or  when someone unfairly(or fairly!) criticises us.   These things will upset us — but the upset   is remarkably short-lived!   If we just remember this, (This too shall pass!) maybe we can  avoid letting these upsets from ruining whole days of our lives  or losing us friends because of our harsh reactions to hurt feelings, or forever losing our composure and good humour to degenerate into “ranting and raving” heebie-jeebies!

So next time, when you are just starting to get worked up about something, remember to ask the  “grounding” question:

“Will this really matter in a year’s time or next week  — or even tomorrow?”

  

3. The story behind “this too shall pass”:

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”(from an address by Abraham Lincoln in 1859, cited in this Wikipedia article).

4. Heed the advice of the wise:

1.  The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one’s work seriously and taking one’s self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.

– Margot Fonteyn

 

2.  You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make an earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others? Half the battle is gained if you never allow yourself to say anything gloomy.

– Lydia Maria Child

 

3.  One loses so many laughs by not laughing at oneself.

– Sara Jeannette Duncan

 

4.  You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself.

– Ethel Barrymore

 

5.  You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

– Bill Cosby 
 

6.  In every job, relationship, or life situation there is inevitably some turbulence. Learn to laugh at it. It is part of what you do and who you are.

– Allen Klein

 

Filed Under: emotional, how can I lighten up more and not take life so seriously?