Practicing Positive Psychology: 8 Ways To Build Your Happiness Capacity

May 29

May 29 Practicing Positive Psychology: 8 Ways To Build Your Happiness Capacity

Being happy might be a struggle these days. A recent article in Washington Post reports that a third of Americans are showing signs of clinical depression or anxiety.

The pandemic is creating a mental health nightmare that, like ur public health and economic responses, will take months or years to address.

If you are experiencing depression or anxiety - therapy, creating support networks, talking with your doctor - these are all good and important ways to deal with the mounting stress and uncertainty of the current situation.

If you are already doing these things or are just experiencing a higher level of stress or anxiety than normal - there are daily things that can help.

Creating a routine, connecting with loved ones, practicing self care. I also want to highlight the benefits of building your happiness capacity.

Positive Psychology is a branch of psychology that researches why we feel happiness, joy and connection and offers insight into how to strengthen these feelings.

You can learn more about the research and the founders here.

In a nutshell - Positive Psychologists believe being happy is a practice. Positive Psychology posits you can build your happiness capacity. You can strengthen your ability to feel happiness and heighten its benefits - much as you would strengthen a muscle. Your brain becomes trained to look for, feel and savor happiness, joy and positive meaningful emotions.

These practices not only help you feel happiness - they provide a way to “turn up” your existing happiness capacity. According to Dr. Barbara Frederickson - they can “broaden and build” our minds ability to respond to new experiences in a positive way. Check out a video talking about her work here.

Gratitude
Practicing Gratitude has been shown to help create and build positive emotion. This can be done by keeping a gratitude list or journal or writing gratitude letters to those who mean something to you. OR just remembering to “move to gratitude” any time you are feeling stuck or anxious.
Capitalizing On Positive Events
This is the practice of really celebrating your wins and collecting “Active Constructive Feedback” from people close to you. It is sharing your good news as good news or sharing when things go right in your life. It is acknowledging the good (think about it as the opposite of complaining!) and then recognizing what you did to help create it or enjoy it!
This can be an inter-personal practice and can help create more positive relationships or you can even use it in your self talk to celebrate or recognize what is going right in your life. More on how to practice it here.
Savoring Positive Feelings
This is what it sounds like - it is the practice of taking a moment and really feeling the positive emotion. It is creating an emotional snapshot when you feel good and letting yourself sink into the feeling of joy, connection or wonder. It is the opposite of rumination (when we do this with negative emotions). It helps you click in and practice allowing yourself to feel the positive.
Positive Reappraisals
This is “a form of meaning-based coping, is the adaptive process by which stressful events are re-construed as benign, valuable, or beneficial. Research has demonstrated that the ability to find benefit from adversity is associated with improved health outcomes.” (read more abut it here and here) -
This is the practice of reframing events that were hard or challenging into places where you showed grit, compassion and learned something. It is about focusing on resilience and your ability to make meaning out of hard situations. (Note: This is not the same as saying that they are good events, did not affect you or SHOULD have happened - it is focusing on your ability to make meaning from every experience)
Focus on Personal Strengths
This is the practice of naming and acting out of your personal strengths or “signature strengths”. This practice has you take an assessment to find your signature strengths and then has you act our each of your strengths in a different way each day.
This more you realize your own strengths and see them in action - the more engagement, meaning and power you feel in your life and in your coping.
Creation of Attainable Goals
It feels so good to mark something off a to-do list - right? Often times we set goals that are too big or too nebulous (“become successful”) or goals that are out of our control. Setting and focusing on goals that are specific and right sized can help create forward momentum, motivation and give us a boost when we complete them.
Kindness/ Volunteering/ Generosity
Being kind and acting on that kindness leads to greater feelings of well-being. Studies show people who donate money to causes they care about or volunteer their time or even just show kindness to others feel greater connection and less stress. Check out the research here.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is everywhere now and it is has so many benefits. It can help us pay better attention to what we are feeling and make space to witness how we feel without reactivity. It can help create the ability to feel less whipped around by negative emotions and it can help create feelings of balance and peace.
Psychology Today writes “practicing mindfulness may make us happier only if we learn to tolerate, make space for, and accept whatever experiences arise, rather than judging them, letting them define us, or running away from them.”