The Happiness Crib Sheet
The finale and resource for all topics covered in the MTU Happiness Challenge
Congratulations! You made it to the finish line of the MTU Happiness Challenge. I hope you found the topics and tips helpful and applicable to your personal experience. This week I recap the tools I covered and summarize them in one place. I also included links (below) if you want to go back and read about a specific topic.
Increasing our happiness benefits both us and those around us. Research shows happier individuals have better coping skills, are more confident, and more helpful to others. They also tend to experience better health outcomes, have more satisfying relationships, more social support, and have better overall work productivity (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). I want to note that longitudinal studies found happiness precedes many of these outcomes. This is great news because it means increasing happiness often leads to additional positive benefits, not the other way around!
How Can We Increase Happiness?
Over the past 6 weeks we explored what contributes to happiness, what doesn’t, and discussed strategies and tools that enhance overall happiness and well-being. We learned about specific tools and exercises that have been shown to improve overall happiness. The six topics below were highlighted due to their positive relationship with increased happiness (click on link to see original posts to learn more about specific tips associated with each topic):
Gratitude. Focusing on what we have vs. what we lack has a powerful impact on our overall well-being. Research shows that practicing gratitude can increase our levels of happiness. This can be done by writing down or sharing with others three things you are grateful for each day. Over time, our brains start to pay attention more to what we have rather than what we lack.
Letting go of conditions we place on happiness. Many of the things we believe will make us happier actually don’t lead to life changing, long lasting happiness. They may give us a slight boost but it is usually temporary and not sustained. Life doesn’t have to be perfect in order for us to allow ourselves to be happy. What conditions do you put on your happiness? What would it be like to be happy even if those conditions are not met?
Being kind to others. Several studies show that providing kind acts resulted in increased well-being and happiness for the giver. It’s cool to be kind.
Savoring pleasant experiences. Intentionally savoring positive moments can increase our happiness by allowing ourselves to stay in the positive moment longer and experience it more fully. Soak it in!
Exercise. There is a positive relationship between exercise and well-being and happiness. Studies showed many types of activities (e.g., running, stretching, walking, etc.) and a little goes a long way (we are talking as little as 10 minutes!).
Letting go of upward social comparisons. Engaging in patterns of comparing ourselves to those we deem to be better than us in some way can result in feeling bad about ourselves and deplete self esteem. This has become more challenging in a world with increased exposure to social media. Are there times where you try to live up to unrealistic standards?
If you took the happiness assessments at the start of the challenge, now is a great time to retake the same assessment and see if anything changed. As a reminder, the University of Pennsylvania offers free and anonymous questionnaires you can complete online. UPenn is one of the leaders in Positive Psychology research. You need to register, but that’s it. Here is the link to the UPenn’s questionnaires. You will see several different measures that assess happiness listed and descriptions.
Thank you for joining me for the MTU Happiness Challenge. As with any skill, the tools to increase happiness take time and practice to become a habit and make a long term impact. When this post goes live I will be at Ride the Rockies, my yearly adventure consisting of 6 days of cycling through the mountains of Colorado. While this would be misery for some, it’s my happy place and I will be very intentional practicing skills such as being grateful for spending time with friends and getting to experience beautiful scenery, cheering on fellow riders and helping anyone who needs it (showing kindness), and savoring each moment, even when climbing a very long and steep incline. Oh, and exercise of course!
Whether it’s a day on the bike, conducting research, or working with my clients, I look for the positive experiences each day brings. We tend to notice what we look for, and if we look for the positives, we just might find, appreciate and savor them.