Your fourth happiness habit is here - Enhancing Positive Emotions
Reduce Stress & Maximize Happiness During
Challenging Times
Hello ,
Guess what, we’re already on our fourth happiness habit, how’s it going for you?
First, a quick tidbit: Here’s what evidence based research found to be helpful in creating a new habit. It turns out that our habits run on a simple loop of cue, routine and reward.
Cue: A cue can be almost anything, from a visual trigger to a certain place (your computer monitor), to a time of day (waking up in the morning), an emotion, or a sequence of thoughts. Using a ‘when/then ’ statement to prime your brain (“When I wake up, then I’ll go for a 10 minute walk”) is very helpful, because you are anchoring it to a behavior you are already performing. Again, the idea behind the “when/then" tool is to ‘pair’ one habit you are already doing, with the newer habit you want to integrate. It lowers the amount of activation energy it takes to get your habit started.
Routine: Research has found that a routine habit, even as short as 10 minutes practiced for a week, can start making a difference. You can even start off with just a few minutes, and in time you can extend the duration and frequency. For now the goal is to take the “willpower” out of the equation, to decrease your brains’ ability to “negotiate” with you not to do something, and to automate it, so you can feel it is easy enough to follow.
Reward: It’s recommended that you dedicate at least 30 seconds of reward time after you execute your new habit. Whether that’s checking it off a list, sharing your good news, noting it in a gratitude journal, or making yourself a cup of tea -- rewarding your efforts releases feel-good hormones that helps to accelerate your habit creation!
As an example, if the ‘keep moving’ habit is a challenging habit for you, pair it with one that you do automatically, like getting up to get your water. What you’re doing is making a new routine: when I get up to refill my water bottle, then I do 2 yoga poses for 5 minutes. Then be rewarded by applauding yourself for doing so, and perhaps checking it off your to-do list!
Ready to continue? Take a deep breath, smile and here we go:
DAY 4: Today's habit is all about how to Enhance Positive Emotions
Besides the obvious fact that positive emotions make us feel more joyous momentarily, (which of course we can all benefit from more of), positive emotions are found to expand our abilities to come up with more solutions to our problems. It turns out that positive emotions broaden our awareness and our thought processes by increasing our attention and focus to more options in the environment. Thus, positive emotions over time improve our resourcefulness potential, and therefore our resilience.
To embrace fearless positivity in the midst of uncertainty, try the following:
Create a list of things that genuinely bring a smile to your face, use photos, stories.
Dial up your playfulness, we are built to play and built through play.
Dial down negativity by being watchful of your TV news time.
Savor the good. List what went well today for you, and why it did, no matter how small it might seem to you.
Today's Habit One small thing I will do today to increase my positive emotions: _____________
If you feel like sharing this habit with me, I would love to hear what you are working on. Please fill out the Happiness Habit form by selecting the button below. At the end of this habit challenge I'll be sharing my favorite happiness habits that I've collected!
Keep finding your ways to develop your Happiness Habits!
Sincerely,
Dr. Tal Leead, Psy.D.
happierbeing.com
Food for Thought
Unexpressed negative emotions don’t go away; they just find other and less productive ways to be known. Acknowledging and accepting your negative emotions is important, but a topic we can’t cover here in this mini email series. Note: Increasing our positive emotions doesn’t mean ignoring our negative ones.
Remember: Little Habits, Big Difference
Time to focus on your positive emotions!
Can you think of anyone else who could benefit from a bit of a boost right now? Please forward this email or share with your friends!
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