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A Daily Dose Of Happiness
Last month, we suggested that whereas success often doesn’t lead to happiness, an attitude of happiness can help to cultivate success. We promised to delve a little deeper into how an ‘attitude of gratitude’ can be developed by keeping a diary.
This concept of a gratitude attitude was developed in a research paper by R A Emmons and M E McCullough, entitled ‘Counting Blessings versus Burdens – an experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life’. You can find it online via this link:
Every group in the study was asked to spend a few moments each week writing. One group was asked to list five things for which they were grateful; another was asked to write down five things that had annoyed them; and the third listed five events that had taken place the previous week. The “grateful” group ended up the most positive and optimistic by the end of the study.
The happy diary
In his book, ‘59 seconds: Think a little, change a lot’, Richard Wiseman takes this idea further and suggests a possible diary exercise that would encourage the participants to write about topics that would help to create a happier future. Suggestions included:
Monday – Thanksgiving (list three things from the past week for which you are grateful)
Tuesday – Terrific times (choose a wonderful experience from your life and spend a few moments describing it and how you felt)
Wednesday – Future fantastic (write about your future life – be realistic, but imagine you have worked hard and achieved all your goals)
Thursday – Dear... (write a short letter to someone who is very important to you, describing how much you care for them and the impact they’ve had on your life)
Friday – Reviewing the situation (list three things from the past week that went really well for you)
He goes on to say that if this is carried out for a week, ‘research suggests you will quickly notice a difference in mood and happiness and that these changes may persist for months’.
Adapting the diary concept
Steve Wills from Customer Insight Solutions learnt something similar for coping with stress when he was a consultant. Members of the team were advised to keep a diary, writing a page per day, which was split into three short sections:
1) Events – Things that have happened during the day, including time spent on projects. This is a good practice anyway, as it acts as a record (for personal appraisals, project updates, etc.)
2) Achievements – This is equivalent to the ‘gratitude’ attitude and relates to things to be happy about. It also acts as a useful reminder of what has actually been done.
3) Emotions – This is expressive writing, and includes things that went wrong or left you feeling stressed. It not only helps you to get issues off your chest; it also helps you to develop coping mechanisms. You start to realise how you react to certain situations and can look at ways of changing that reaction in the future. It can also help you to get through hard times, as you can more easily rationalise what is happening.
The diary will therefore not only help to improve your positivity (and therefore happiness) but will make you more aware of your emotions. This will enable you to use this information to develop a systematic, solutions-based approach for dealing with any negativity in the future. In forthcoming issues, we will look more closely at each of these three sections.
