Description of the video:
Faculty presenter Nichole Alspaugh Williams, Ed.S, LMHC, NCC
Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Power of Positive Psychology: New Habits for Work and Life. We are now in the fifth week of our series where we're finally talking about what truly makes us happy. Today's agenda will be a quick review of how researchers began studying happiness habits that truly make us happy. That's where we'll spend the majority of our time. And then finally our tasks for next week.
So, how researchers began studying happiness. This came, if you remember, we talked about in week one, I believe this comes from Shawn Achor's TED talk that he did in Bloomington. Where if you remember, he said what's on the x-axis doesn't matter. What's on the y-axis doesn't matter. What matters is that little red dot by itself right here. That is the outlier.
And so that's what positive psychology researchers studied. They looked at the people that were flourishing in their lives and looked to see what they were doing that allowed them to be, allowed them to flourish and to be happy. So at long last, this is what researchers over time have come up with. That truly makes us happy. We've covered a lot of these and the ones that we haven't yet covered, I will talk about today.
So Martin Seligman, along with a team of researchers, did a study of several of the interventions that have been proven to increase happiness. And what they found was that three rose to the top. So the gratitude, and we talked about this last week, the gratitude journal, the gratitude visit, and using your character strengths in new ways. And the study that they determined this through, they had people do a gratitude journal for a week. And they used their character strengths in a new way for one week. And what they found is that their depressive symptoms decreased and their happiness increased for six months after that one week.
As far as the gratitude visit goes, that had the largest positive change in terms of happiness increase, but it only lasted for a month. Overall, what they found in this study is that participants, go figure, that actually did their homework for the week, that completed the whole week, got better results. And some participants just spontaneously continued at these habits afterwards because they worked so well. They got the best results.
So let's talk about some of the other interventions that we haven't yet talked about. Social connections are a big part of increasing our happiness. And as you can imagine, that's a big part. And you've probably heard a lot about how our lack of social connection during the pandemic and during quarantine has affected our mental health.
And so Diener and Seligman did a study where they studied happy people and unhappy people. And what they found is that happy people have more close friends, stronger family ties, romantic ties, and spend more time with family, friends, and their partner.
So what does this mean for us? What can we do? Well, we can strive to connect even when it's hard. Find ways to get outside with our friends and our family so we can connect in person and do it safely. I know we're all Zoomed out but making sure to connect and see the people that mean the most to us. Zoom or FaceTime connect in that way.
If you just can't stand another Zoom call, a good old-fashioned phone call can do the trick. I know we're a texting society now, but phone calls can do a lot to help with your social connectedness, as well. And then finally, just conversation. Strangers, people you run into on the street. Yeah, if you're in the store and talking to the cashier at Target, or your barista at Starbucks. Having a good, fun conversation with them can boost your happiness, as well.
Meditation: we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Meditation can increase your happiness, especially if you're doing what's called a loving kindness meditation. A loving kindness meditation concentrates on feeling warmth and care towards yourself and others.
Shawn Achor said even two minutes per day for 21 days rewires your brain to allow it to work more optimistically and successfully. It teaches us to curb our mind-wandering. When your mind wanders, it typically wanders to the past with regret or wanders to the future with worry. And so meditation allows us to curb that mind-wandering and help us be more in the present moment and reduce regret and reduce the worry.
And then finally with practice, and remember, meditation is a practice, something we get better at over time. With practice, we can access that peaceful state when we're faced with stressors.
So there was a gentleman who put on a meditation retreat. And this was presented at a positive psychology class, a continuing ed class that I did last month. And basically the people that I'm going to show you went to a 30-day meditation retreat. And in the first picture on each of these slides, the person leading the retreat asks the person to think about what they were looking for in the month ahead. And then in the second picture, that was taken at the 30-day mark at the end of the retreat. And they were asked to think about what the retreat, how and what the retreat had been for them.
And so as you look at this woman's expression from day 1 to day 30, you can see, first of all, what's called a Duchenne smile. Where the smile is actually not just with your mouth, but actually see it in your eyes. So you can see her smile is more genuine. She just has a more peaceful, happy look about her. With this gentleman, look at his forehead. It's more relaxed. Look at his eyes. His eyes are peaceful. He has a gentle, peaceful smile. Finally we have a Duchenne smile again. You can see the bags under her eyes a little bit. That's showing a genuine smile, just a peaceful look, a gentle smile. So meditation can make a huge difference in our lives, both from what we learned a couple of weeks ago and what we're seeing here and what we've talked about today.
Social media. I know for some of you this year, you're on it and others of you are like, "No way, I'm not on it. Social media is a waste of time." This is for those of us that are on it. And I count myself among you and among us.
So there was a three-week study done out of the University of Pennsylvania where they split students into two groups. And the experimental group was allowed to be on social media for 30 minutes a day. They could be on Facebook for ten minutes, Instagram for ten minutes, and Snapchat for ten minutes. And the reason they did that instead of just going cold turkey, was because that was more realistic to real life. Because they assume that people would never just totally get off of social media, although some people have.
So the experimental group at the end of this three-week study had less loneliness, depression, anxiety, and fear of missing out. So if you are wanting to increase your happiness, consider decreasing your social media.
The rest of the interventions that are habits that make us happy are on this slide. So first of all: experiences. We talked last week about how money doesn't make us happy and buying things doesn't make us happy. However, if we use our money to buy experiences, that does increase our happiness.
So if you think about going on a vacation and you think about all the planning that goes into it. Looking at the different hotels, how you're going to get there, what you're going to do, all of that looking forward to stuff increases our happiness. Being there, being in the moment, being separated from work for awhile and just having fun increases our happiness. The pictures that you take, maybe a photo book you make afterwards, the memories telling people about it. All of that increases our happiness. So experiences boost our happiness rather than buying things.
Savoring. If you can choose one thing to savor a day, whether it's a hot chocolate chip cookie right out of the oven. Or if you're not a sweets fan, maybe it's a deep dish, Chicago-style pizza. (New Yorkers, I'm sorry. I'm a Chicago pizza fan. Not thin crust.) Boy, whatever your pizza, just really savor that.
Maybe it's fresh sheets on your bed at night. Savor those things, be in the moment, really taste it, smell it, feel it. And if you can do it with somebody else, if you would share that cookie with someone else, if you can share the pizza with someone else, that brings in social connections and that also boosts your happiness.
We've talked about random acts of kindness and doing one in a day boosts your happiness for a little bit. But research has shown that if you do several random acts of kindness in the day, if you just need a happiness boost, do five random acts of kindness in a day and that boost to your happiness will last for weeks afterward.
Exercise and sleep. Exercise boosts your happiness. It decreases depression. Sleep, I think we're all a little bit grumpier when we don't get a lot of sleep a night. Both of these things have been well researched in terms of increasing our happiness.
And then finally, making your bed. I just assigned this to my students last week and I didn't tell them why. I didn't tell them the effect it would have. But Gretchen Rubin, who wrote The Happiness Project, described making your bed as, or the importance of it is, how outer order produces inner calm.
And just the idea of having that small satisfaction at the beginning of the day. Just a small achievement. It primes you for achieving more in the day. And it gives a calm feeling every time you walk by. Rather than looking at a messy bed, we walk by and see your very nicely made bed. If you happen to have a lot of pillows on your bed, put all the pillows on there, make it look really nice, and it really can boost your happiness.
Okay, our tasks for next week. We of course are going to continue with the gratitude journal. Number one way to increase happiness. If you use social media, decrease to 30 minutes a day, and you can divide that up however you wish. Savor one thing about every day, or, I'm sorry, savor one thing each day, whether it's something you eat, something you're doing. Write about it in your journal.
And then of course we're keeping up our meditation habit. If you feel ready, you can increase the amount of time you spend meditating, but make sure you're meditating at least five minutes per day. And on the bottom right of your slide you'll see our previous habits that you may have found helpful. Feel free to continue any of those that you wish, for this next week. That's all I have for you this week.
Thank you for coming and I look forward to seeing you for our final week, next week. Have a good one.