Mindset

Practicing gratitude helps strengthen your existing relationships, fosters goodwill with strangers and makes the world a nicer place. More importantly, it just feels good when you do it. We asked our readers to share what they are most grateful for, and this is what they had to say. New Beginnings I am grateful that God has put a man in my life who loves me for who I am, loves my boys as though they were his own and wants to spend the rest of his life with me. Second chances are wonderful!—Kathryn W. I’m grateful for this baby that is growing inside me! It has taken years to get here, but it will finally be arriving in February!—Angie L. Today, I’m grateful that my sweet baby granddaughter arrived safely by cesarean after a difficult 24 hours! The new family is all healthy and happy. That makes me very happy!—Victoria S. The Gift of Life What’s not to be grateful for? I woke up healthy, went to a job I love, participated in Rotary, had enough money to pay some bills and had pizza and lime sorbet for dinner with my son. In short, I’m grateful I have a life that I don’t need a vacation from.—Brenda A. Today I am grateful for my eyes to see…my ears to hear...my heart to beat ...and the warm sunshine on my face.— Karrie W. I am grateful for the breath I just took.—Peter B. Good Friends I’m grateful for the friends and neighbors I have known for the last 20 years and how we are always there for each other, in good times or difficult times.—Sallie H. I’m grateful for the co-workers I’ve worked with for several years who are just like family. We went on a long walk this evening at the park for exercise but talked and laughed the whole time. Good for the health and good for the soul.—Veletta T. Getting up and having Lola by my side (she’s my dog).—Mary M. True Love My siblings and I feel grateful to still have our parents who have been married 60 years! My father will celebrate his 80th birthday in October!—Susan C. I am grateful for my two daughters, my son and my seven grandchildren. They have helped me get through the loss of my husband. I feel blessed every day for the memory of him and the love we had together. Not too many people get to experience that love in their lifetime. I am so grateful for that love.— Rebecca H. I am grateful for three wonderful years of marriage to an amazing man! So thankful he chose me to spend the rest of his life with!— Amanda R. From the Experts “Bring a few things to mind that you feel grateful for before going to sleep each night. Tal Ben-Shahar, a positive psychologist, has been doing that regularly for 10 years. Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, has been doing it even longer—for 30 years! As gratitude fills your mind, you feel a warm glow in your heart. This not only strengthens your “positivity quotient” over the long run but also helps you fall asleep faster. It fills your mind with positive thoughts, not leaving room for the worry and anxiety that sometimes keep us awake at night.” —Joseph Emet, author of Finding the Blue Sky. “To be truly happy, you have to realize and appreciate what is already in the world around you: the people who add to your daily experiences; the beauty in nature around you; the physical ability to participate in activities to the degree that you do. That appreciation is gratitude. We all have so much for which to be grateful; we simply need to notice and appreciate what’s there.” —Susie Wolbe, author of The Empowered Teacher.

On our podcast, Live Happy Now, we bring you ideas and research on how to live a happier and more meaningful life. You’ll find dozens of interviews with positive psychology and well-being thought leaders as well as media personalities like veteran newsman and bestselling author Dan Harris, whose talk we’ve excerpted below. How do you ­find the time to meditate? I prioritize a few things. I make sure I get enough sleep, enough exercise, that I get to spend time with my family, and I make sure to meditate. I try to not get overly worked up over any one thing at any one moment. I do my best to get it all done, and sometimes things fall by the wayside and I try to pick it up tomorrow. This is where meditation is very helpful. I think in some ways, counterintuitively, making a little bit of time to do mental hygiene actually makes you more effective because you spend less time engaged in useless rumination and worry. We spend a lot of time working on our home décor, our stock portfolios, our hair, our bodies, but most of us spend no time working on the one ­filter we experience everything through and that’s our mind. And it’s just common sense to tune the thing up. What advice do you have for people who are hesitant to get inside their own heads? First of all, you’re not alone. It’s not a strange concern to have. A lot of people are worried that if they look into their own mind they might not like what they see. It’s there anyway and it is having an impact on you whether you choose to see it or not. So your options are whether to be yanked around by it unconsciously or to deal with it forthrightly. What is a good starting practice to jump into meditation? I’m a Type A person and when I do things I expect a certain result. I expect a win, but you don’t really win at meditation. It’s not that kind of endeavor. You have to go in expecting that you’re going to be distracted. In most forms of meditation you’re focusing on your breath and you’re going to get lost a million times. People think that if you’re getting lost you’re doing it wrong, but in fact the act of meditation is simply to notice when you’ve become distracted and to start over again. And that act of failure is success. It’s like a bicep curl for your brain. Every time you notice you’re worrying and you start again that is a bicep curl. It changes your brain. It may feel like failure, but it isn’t.

52 Small Changes for the Mind: Improve Memory. Minimize Stress. Increase Productivity. Boost Happiness. by Brett Blumenthal    By making one small change a week all year long, we can feel much less stressed and more fulfilled, writes author Brett Blumenthal. Read 20 minutes a day. Choose books and articles you actually want to (rather than should) read. When you read what you love, your interest in reading grows. Reading keeps your brain healthy and protects against memory loss. Go on a screen diet. How much of your day is spent in front of a screen? Brett reports that some Americans spend up to 10 hours a day online, on mobile devices and in front of the TV. Try to reduce digital time by an hour a day. Attend a lecture in person instead of online or go to a concert instead of watching YouTube videos. Too much screen time can result in stress and sleeping problems, research shows. Deal with demons. Holding on to regret for past mistakes can hurt your potential and your future. Ask yourself: What past mistakes still upset you? Acknowledge your regrets and ask yourself what lessons you have learned. Start viewing your mistakes as “invaluable blessings,” Brett says. The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success by Emma Seppala, Ph.D. In her book, The Happiness Track, Emma Seppala, Ph.D., writes that working in a stressed-out overdrive mode isn’t the best or only pathway to success. With the latest findings in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, she shows us how happiness has a profound effect on our professional lives by increasing our productivity as well as our emotional and social intelligence. Tap into your natural resilience. Do something restorative to shore up your resilience like taking a hike in nature or getting a massage. Emma says that the best way to immediately gain resilience in a difficult situation is to focus on your breath, a “rapid and reliable pathway to your nervous system dedicated to helping you regain your optimal state.” Succeed through compassion. A compassionate culture at work results in improved employee productivity and well-being. Inspire each other at work, look out for one another, emphasize the meaningfulness of the work and treat each other with respect and gratitude. Manage your energy well. Letting your emotions rule you can be exhausting. Instead, cultivate calm.  “When you are calm, you are better able to manage your thoughts and feelings,” writes Emma. Being calm allows you to be more observant, listen better, communicate more skillfully and make better decisions. Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead by Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage, writes author Brené Brown. When we try to prevent ourselves from feeling vulnerable, we also are shutting out experiences that can bring purpose and meaning to our lives. Let go of perfectionism. Perfectionism is the belief that if we do things perfectly we can avoid the pain of blame, judgment and shame. Perfectionism is other-focused: What will they think? Instead, she advises to move toward healthy striving, which is self-focused: How can I improve? Practice being seen. Share a product, article or piece of art you have created. To become more courageous, we have to risk being vulnerable. You can want people to like what you share without attaching your self-worth to how it is received. Without your self-worth on the line, you are more likely to risk sharing your raw talent and gifts. Connect. True belonging can only happen when we are self-accepting and present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world. Want to live a connected life? Spend less time and energy winning over people who don’t matter, and see the value of cultivating your true relationships. With vulnerability, you can welcome more love, belonging, joy, empathy, innovation and creativity into your life. The Sweet Spot: How to Find Your Groove at Home and Work by Christine Carter, Ph.D. Do you ever feel like you are in a rut of busyness? With her expertise on happiness, productivity and elite performance, author Christine Carter shows you how to step off the merry-go-round of busy and find your sweet spot. Start a new happy habit. The brain starts to wire itself for greater automaticity the first time we repeat a behavior, so you can make huge strides in forming a new habit in just a day or so. Select a new habit that would make you happy if you did it every day—one that has the greatest built-in reward for you. It could be taking a walk at dusk or starting a gratitude journal. Show compassion for strangers. It’s easy to do nice things for people you love, but you can become an Olympic-level giver by giving your time, money or love to strangers. Acts of compassion can help you shift from self-preoccupation to true connection and community. Gain mastery. Mastery is the purest example of finding your sweet spot, where strength and ease intersect. When you master an activity, you have great power with little strain. Gaining mastery often means facing difficulty, persisting and practicing. Christine writes that we should stop trying so hard to do everything right and gain the freedom that comes from doing the right things instead.

Money doesn’t buy happiness. But what you do with your money can make you happier. Researchers have long been aware of the different levels of happiness brought on by spending money on experiences versus material objects. In a 2010 Cornell study, people who spent money on experiences were more pleased initially and became even happier over time. In contrast, those who spent money on “stuff,” or material goods, often had more negative feelings toward their purchase—they worried they hadn’t gotten a good deal, were unsure if they’d gotten the right item and fell into the trap of comparing what they’d bought to the Joneses. According to Thomas Gilovich, Ph.D., a Cornell professor of psychology, experiences “tend to be experienced, remembered and evaluated more on their own terms, and less in terms of how they compare to alternative experiences.” They become a piece of us, something entirely personal, unlike the objects surrounding us. Going to a baseball game is better for happiness than even getting a signed ball. An event doesn’t decrease in value over time or wear out. Instead, the happiness we get from it grows in our memory. Happiness That Lasts In their September 2014 study, Waiting for Merlot, published in Psychological Science, Thomas and Amit Kumar, a Ph.D. candidate at the university, went a step further. They wanted to see how we can derive even more happiness from our experiences. What they found was that “experiences are kind of rewarding in anticipation as well,” even when you are standing in line. For example, if you’re waiting for symphony tickets, you and the others in line are in a fairly positive state of mind. On the other hand, waiting to buy tangible goods has a whole different vibe—think crowds on Black Friday, full of competition rather thancamaraderie. The period of anticipation is exciting when you are involved with buying an experience, no matter if the purchase is big or small. We actually want to delay consumption of experiential purchases. “Waiting is part of the fun for experiences,” Amit says. Even making dinner reservations can help you anticipate the meal to come, stretching out the exhilaration of the experience. Sharing the trip or dinner with a loved one gives you opportunities to talk about it in the future, strengthening your bond. Choosing Wisely Of course, we can’t spend all of our money doing things; we still have to buy groceries. But, what we can do is “tilt spending a bit more in the direction of experiences,” Amit says. When that tax refund check comes, instead of heading to the mall, consider planning a trip. Because even once your cash is gone, every time you talk about your trip, you’ll get another jolt of happiness. Talk about money well spent!

“Humans are my favorite animal.” This quote came from a graduate student during one of my recent workshops at the University of Pennsylvania. It captures the priorities of a person high in social intelligence. These individuals want to be around other people, interacting and connecting. They may not always agree with each person but they can appear to be just as comfortable with a CEO, a teacher, a young child or a homeless person. They’re quick to see the common humanity that is part of all of us. How about you? Do you have a sense of what makes other people tick? Do you feel you can easily fit into most social situations? Are you closely attuned to your own feelings as well as to the emotions of others? One of the quickest ways to begin expressing your social intelligence is to practice seeing and naming the strengths in people around you. You can use the “learning to SEA” method of strengths-spotting: Spot a character strength: “I see kindness in you…” Explain what you saw: “…because you were giving extra time helping that student after the meeting.” Appreciate and validate the person for the strength: “I appreciated seeing your kindness in action. It was inspiring for how I will try to interact with my employees.” This SEA method is your social intelligence-in-action because you’re observing others, understanding a core part of them and using your social savvy to communicate this with the person. Consider the impact of bringing your social intelligence and strengths-spotting to people in your life. Use it with those you love the most and with those whom you have differences in opinions and beliefs. Social intelligence means to look deeper. Taking time to understand and empathize can have a significant impact. Here are three additional ways you can build your social intelligence in different situations: In one of your relationships, when you find yourself in a relational argument you have been in before, attempt to find at least one positive element in the other person’s comments and opinions. Find a way to bring this into the conversation. At work, make a point to empathize with one of your co-workers who seems to be upset, stressed, or having difficulty with something in their life. Gently ask some questions and check in to see whether they are comfortable sharing with you. Be sure to spend more time listening than speaking and, if appropriate, offer emotional support. At a community outing or just walking around a local park, take notice of someone who seems alone, unhappy, excluded, or cast aside. Use your social intelligence to approach them and start a conversation.

Most of us log almost 30 miles and nearly one hour behind the wheel every day, according to a study from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety and the Urban Institute. But no need to worry, here are a few stress busters to turn the interior of your car into a Zen-filled oasis certain to help you steer clear of a bad mood. Stop Sticking Your Neck Out Micah Mortali, director of the Kripalu Schools of Yoga and Ayurveda in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts, says that people often hold tension in their neck and shoulders, particularly those who sit at a desk or are seated in a car. “They tend to lean forward and stick their chin out or clench their jaw, which causes tension in the neck,” he says. You can let a lot of that go when you’re stopped at a red light, parked or once you’ve switched the engine off by first taking a deep breath, Micah says. As you exhale, let your chin drop toward the chest, gently stretching your neck muscles. On your next inhale, roll your right ear toward your right shoulder and exhale by rolling the chin back to center. Repeat on the left side. Make Your Nose Happy Your nose is connected to your mood, says Rose Heart, a certified master aromatherapist and founder of Los Angeles-based Organic Infusions, the harmony-inspired aromatherapy oils company. “When we breathe in the aroma of essential oils through the nose, they are absorbed into the limbic system which is in charge of regulating our emotions.” A combination of lavender, frankincense and rosemary essential oils alleviates stress by calming the mind while providing the right amount of energy, focus and clarity needed while driving. “This combination will bring balance to the emotions without being overly sedating.” Rose suggests filling a spritz bottle with 10 drops of essential oils and about 1 cup of distilled water and misting the interior of the car before putting it in gear. Just Breathe When a fellow driver cuts you off or rides your back bumper, instead of blowing your top, Micah suggests taking a deep breath. “Taking slow, deep breaths triggers the rest and relaxation response of the sympathetic nervous system, and acts as a kill switch for the fight-or-flight response, which people often experience when they’re stressed,” he says. Your best mood-boosting breathing technique is performed by inhaling slowly for four counts, holding the breath for two counts and exhaling for four counts. “This will help calm the mind and makes the heart pump more slowly and rhythmically,” Micah says. Repeat as needed. Get Twisted Your physical and mental state before you get into your car can have a lot to do with your mood on longer rides. Before heading off, yoga poses that open the spine and hips can help reduce discomfort and stress during the trip, says Mandy Unanski Enright, a registered dietitian nutritionist and yoga teacher based in New Jersey. She recommends reaching your arms high overhead while gently pushing the pelvic region forward to create a slight bend in the back. Follow this by swan diving forward to uttanasana (forward fold) with hands on either side of the feet and knees bent as needed. Grab opposite elbows and let your head hang heavy (ragdoll pose). Shake the head yes and no while letting the hips sway side to side to release tension in these areas. While bending the knees, gently roll up one vertebra at a time. You can also try a seated spinal twist. Sitting in the car before buckling up, bring the left hand across to the right knee or seat edge while looking over the left shoulder. Hold for five breaths, then switch.