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Let Your Workout Lift Your Life

Staci Ardison of Austin, Texas, believed she’d be happy if she lost weight. She went on a diet and started doing cardio; she lost the weight, but didn’t find the happiness she expected. At a friend’s suggestion, she tried powerlifting, a form of competitive weightlifting. Progressing from deadlifting 135 pounds to 315 pounds and also adding 50 pounds to both her overhead press and bench press in six months did more than lift her spirits. “You pick up a bar and nothing else really matters because it’s so empowering,” Staci says. “Knowing what my body was capable of made me very happy and excited.” Staci discovered that powerlifting’s progressive nature (each week, more weight is added) and team atmosphere made her more confident about speaking her mind and more at ease meeting new people. “It takes time, but as you start lifting more [weight] and realizing who you are and what you’re capable of, what other people think doesn’t matter as much anymore,” Staci says. She found herself moving past the crippling shyness she’d experienced since childhood, easily making friends after recent moves. “Before I started [powerlifting], I would have never talked to anyone, anywhere,” she says. As Staci learned, a departure from your routine can have profound effects on your body, mindset and spirit—and this is especially true when it comes to fitness. If you want to feel happier, more confident and strong-minded, sometimes it’s best to put down the self-help books, postpone the therapy appointment and hit the gym instead. Workouts that push your limits can challenge you mentally and stretch your boundaries. “It’s going to be a little uncomfortable at times,” explains Ariane Machin, Ph.D., clinical and sports psychologist and co-founder of the Conscious Coaching Collective, an agency focused on programs to help clients embrace their power and find their inner voices. “Your muscles will be burning, you’ll be breathing faster than you would like, [and you’ll be facing] the psychological barrier of, ‘Can I actually do this?’ ” According to Ariane, you should embrace that unpleasant feeling because it’s a positive sign of change. These levels of discomfort can also be an asset: As your fight-or-flight system becomes engaged, your heart rate goes up, blood circulates, more oxygen is supplied to the brain and you are primed for better performance. Building a base As Staci’s example shows us, toughing it out during exercise can also help you find your footing outside the gym. Studies show that exercise helps with confidence, mood, happiness and stress resilience. Using data from 15 European countries and more than 10,000 respondents, a 2015 study published in the open access journal BMC Public Health determined that more exercise was associated with greater happiness. Another 2015 study from the University of Turku in Finland found that young men and working adults with good physical fitness felt more active, energetic, capable and confident in their daily tasks, and experienced less stress. The gradual process Staci used to gain muscle demonstrates exactly how strength should be built. According to Daniel Rockers, Ph.D., a Sacramento-based clinical health psychologist, building strength—whether while working out or in life—requires getting out of your comfort zone. Gradually and progressively pushing yourself out of that zone, he says, can get you used to overcoming stress, instead of being overwhelmed by it. Practicing a sport or exercise where you’re consistently pushing the envelope makes you more resilient to stressors in other areas of life, as both exercise and dealing with stress both involve periods of work and rest. Happy hormones are also created during exercise, whether it’s moderate or intense. Janet Schrager, Ph.D., says that endorphins produced through movement cause an exercise-induced mood boost, often called runner’s high, will make you feel more positive. For maximum benefit, Janet recommends aiming to work out at least 30 minutes, five times per week. She often prescribes aerobic activities—the best type of exercise for promoting endorphin-releasing oxygen—such as swimming, running or biking. “I always recommend movement and exercise as a critical component for well-being and positivity,” Janet says. Research exploring the connection between exercise and positivity found that taking a brisk 35-minute walk five times a week subdued symptoms of mild depression, and the mood-boosting impact of exercise appears to last longer than taking antidepressants, according to a study referenced in Harvard Health Publications. Working out also improves focus, increases cognition and boosts creative insight, Janet adds. Discover new ways of thinking Two months ago, online pet insurance entrepreneur Nick Braun felt his business and personal life were in a rut. He decided to shake up his solo exercise routine by taking group classes. Plunging himself into an unfamiliar environment with new-to-him exercises that he enjoyed revitalized his personal life. “[The classes] really reinvigorated me physically and mentally with my business,” Nick says. He started making creative adjustments to his business such as modifying his website design and opening an Instagram account. Nick’s experience reflects scientific findings: In 2016, research published in Scientific Reports found that one aerobic exercise session significantly enhanced both visual and muscle learning in study subjects. What’s more: This effect can last more than 30 minutes post-exercise, leading researchers to believe that exercise of moderate intensity may improve the brain’s plasticity (the ability of the brain to change). Another 2014 study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology performed experiments showing that walking boosted performance on a creativity test. Nick definitely found this to be true. He discovered that attending classes—a blend of butt-kicking strength training, cardio and stretching—in a female-dominated environment sparked ideas on how to market to his business’ similarly female-saturated market. Observing how the female owners marketed their club—from the way they designed their logo to the colors and layout of their studio—helped him understand he had been approaching marketing his business from a purely analytical perspective. He shifted his approach by hiring copywriters and other creative experts to help him achieve his newly inspired creative vision. Outside-the-box fitness New York health coach Samantha Elkrief also experienced a change in outlook from hitting the gym. Samantha always thought of herself as skinny and frail; she was convinced she would never be considered a strong woman. In fact, she was so afraid she’d fail at building strength that she never even tried. But, after being diagnosed with endometriosis in 2014 and learning that exercise could help counteract the condition, she joined a gym, hired a personal trainer and started strength training. When her trainer suggested box jumping—a muscle-building activity that requires squatting, lifting both feet off the ground in one explosive movement and landing on top of a box, she was terrified. “Trusting my body to take both feet off the ground at the same time and jump on this crazy box had me freaking out,” she recalls. But Samantha made it onto the box that day, and eventually, she was box jumping up to 20 inches. That exercise was just one of the confidence-building movements Samantha learned while working out. “I used to think that I couldn’t get good at something I wasn’t inherently good at. But the gym flipped that around for me,” she says. A confidence boost Samantha’s confidence followed her outside of the gym: She took up new hobbies, regardless of whether she thought she’d excel at them, including food photography and painting classes. At work, she fostered new business alliances and began submitting articles to publications. “Pushing myself at the gym gave me so much more confidence,” she says. “In life, you don’t often get 10 opportunities to push yourself out of your comfort zone in an hour. At the gym, you do. And it retrains your brain.” Whether you’re building strength and confidence like Staci and Samantha, or making changes in life and business like Nick, it’s best to start small and work your way up. According to Pax Tandon, Ph.D., a Philadelphia-based positive psychology expert, you can take your first small step by changing the way you breathe. Breathing mindfully will help combat the fear and anxiety that may stop you from getting to your workout. Don't forget to breathe To begin, try this breathing exercise: Count four seconds to inhale, hold for four counts, then exhale for six counts. As you inhale, concentrate on breathing in positives like optimism, calm and positivity; as you hold, clear your mind and breathe out negative emotions like stress and anger. Practice this cycle for one minute a day to start. Then, increase the minutes you practice as you get more comfortable. Eventually, muscle memory takes over and you will begin to naturally breathe mindfully. This process will bring calming oxygen to your brain and inspire a trend: Your breathing will help you make it to your workouts and your workouts will help you develop your breathing even more, which will help you tackle further ventures outside your comfort zone. “[Without breathing mindfully] we end up in states of panic or fear. The breath gets very shallow and short, which works against us,” Pax says. Another positive step, Ariane points out, is that changing damaging thought patterns may help you push your limits. One pattern that may need to be countered is comparison syndrome—bringing yourself down by comparing yourself with others. Ariane advises that you remember everyone’s process and strengths are different. You can oust the comparative mindset with gratitude and self-appreciation by performing daily gratitude lists and viewing your weaknesses as strengths. Instead of thinking “I wish my body were different,” try “I appreciate what my body does for me.” For Samantha, who sometimes deals with comparison syndrome in yoga class or on Facebook, staying focused on her own accomplishments—and deleting the Facebook app from her phone to minimize her feelings of FOMO (fear of missing out)—helps the 33-year-old entrepreneur sidestep these comparison traps. But despite the challenges you may encounter along the way, taking yourself out of your comfort zone is certainly worthwhile. “It makes you a different person,” Samantha says. Carimé Lane is a Vancouver-based freelance writer. Several years ago she found the sport of boxing, which never fails to push her outside her comfort zone.

science

We’re Better Together

Michelle Gielan: Shawn, what led you to write your new book, Big Potential? Shawn Achor: Since writing The Happiness Advantage, I had a huge discovery. I became a father as you know [Note: Shawn and Michelle are married happiness researchers], and this has changed so much of my thinking about what creates happiness and meaning. For the past 10 years, I have been sharing positive psychology research on happiness around the world, and yet during that time depression rates and suicide rates have doubled among almost every age group—including for 8-year-olds! We seem to be going in the wrong direction. What is going on that has caused such a dramatic shift, and how do we stop it so our son doesn’t have to live in that world? I believe that there is one main reason why we are seeing elevated rates of anxiety in our schools and unhappiness in the world—a crucial mistake that every major religious tradition and ancient philosopher warned us against. We have been trying to pursue happiness and success by ourselves, in isolation and in competition. We have been told that success is a zero-sum game, and if someone else gets happier you will feel worse in comparison. We’ve also been told that happiness is a private, personal choice, and that you can’t change other people. This leads us to feel disconnected at work, hypercompare on social media and never feel like we are enough. This is what I call “small potential”—believing we have to do all this alone. We have been taught to strip others out of our formula for success and happiness. When you choose to be more grateful and positive, that makes other people around you more grateful and positive as well. This creates a virtuous cycle. I felt like something needed to be done to help people realize that scientifically, the only way to achieve our “big potential” is to transform the pursuit of happiness and success from a solitary one to an interconnected one. Michelle: What is one of the most eye-opening studies from the new book? Shawn: I have lots of new research in the book, but my favorite is not mine. It comes from researchers from the University of Virginia, who originally found that if you look at a hill you need to climb, and you are in a negative state of mind, that hill can look 30 percent steeper than it actually is (cited in Before Happiness). But in the follow-up study, they found something even more amazing: If you judge a hill you need to climb while standing by yourself, your brain perceives that hill as being 20 percent steeper than if you were standing next to a friend who is not even looking in the direction of the hill. Our very perception of reality is transformed by the presence of others. Michelle: Does Big Potential include practical, hands-on advice like your previous books? Shawn: I believe research is useless unless it is lived. Based on more than 40 research studies, we now know that there is a clear path to achieving more success in life while finding more meaning and happiness. Once you’ve made the mindset change that you must pursue happiness and success with others, the book outlines five steps—“SEEDS”—that lead to big potential. They are: - Surround yourself with positive outliers. This allows you to create a star system instead of trying to be a superstar alone. - Extend power to others. This allows you to take the burden of change off your shoulders and let others shine while you focus on your strengths. - Enhance others using prism praise. Instead of trying to raise others up using comparison praise (you’re so much smarter than the other kids), focus on praise that builds up the individual and the supporters that got them there. - Defend the gains. In a hyperconnected world, we need to build up our emotional immune system so that we are not overwhelmed by people seeking small potential. - Sustain the momentum. This chapter is filled with practical ways in which you can help create collective momentum so that it is easier to maintain growth. Michelle: What is your favorite story from the new book? Shawn: It’s actually two stories together, both about flashing. I start the book with a biologist who discovered millions of lightning bugs all lighting up at the exact same time in Indonesia. Biologists and mathematicians didn’t believe him because how could they possibly do it without a leader, and why would they shine together? But it turns out when a lightning bug ashes alone, they have a 3 percent chance of finding a mate that night. When they flash together, the success rate is 82 percent. It seems we shine brighter together. I pair that with a story at Harvard where as a tradition the students take off their clothes and run through Harvard Yard naked at midnight before exams, flashing all the onlookers. I attempted the run in the buff, but was too shy to go with the group. As soon as I walked out of my room into the snow, naked and barefoot, I realized that letting the group go two minutes ahead of me was a mistake. It meant that everyone would see me alone; in a group, you can’t tell anyone apart on a snowy night. I immediately regretted it, but when I turned to go back inside I realized I had locked myself out of my dorm. To me, that is a perfect metaphor for trying to pursue success alone and in isolation. We are less successful and much more exposed. We are better together. SHAWN ACHOR and MICHELLE GIELAN bring positive psychology to organizations all over the world to fuel happiness and success. Shawn is The New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. His TED Talk has over 5 million views and millions have seen his PBS program. Michelle is the founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research and formerly served as a national news anchor for CBS News. She holds a master’s degree in applied positive psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and recently published the book Broadcasting Happiness. Visit them at shawnachor.com and michellegielan.com.

Reading

Top 10 Books That Will Change Your Life in 2017

Set aside some reading time and stock your shelves with these 10 exceptional new books, which cover a range of illuminating topics from the way technology affects our well-being to how to live a compassionate life. Make 2017 happier and more fulfilling by giving yourself the gift of continued learning. 1. The Future of Happiness: 5 Modern Strategies for Balancing Productivity and Well-Being In the Digital Era by Amy Blankson Overwhelmed by the flood of apps and information online? Discover how to navigate technology in a way that enhances your happiness. Amy Blankson, cofounder of the digital consulting firm GoodThink, reveals five strategies to thrive in the digital age. Start by using your power of choice to scan for the positive. Learn how to use technology as a sixth sense to better understand yourself and the world around you. 2. The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living by Meik Wiking We've heard countless times that Danes are the happiest people in the world, and hygge, which translates roughly as "cozy" or "homey," may be the key, according to Meik Wiking, CEO of the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen. Breaking bread with friends at a table topped with flickering candles; curling up in front of a fire with a good book—these are prime examples of hygge-based happiness. Curling up in front of a fire with a book about hygge? Double-Danish happiness! 3. The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu Your personal hardships can turn to joy. Nobel Peace Prize laureates His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu credit personal experiences of hardship and oppression for their eventual ability to lead the joyful lives they live today. Discover the eight pillars of joy to overcome fear, stress, anger, grief and illness. Suffering might be inevitable, according to this dynamic duo, but how we respond to it is our choice. 4. How to Live a Good Life: Soulful Stories, Surprising Science, and Practical Wisdom by Jonathan Fields Author and entrepreneur Jonathan Fields believes a good life is made up of three buckets: a bucket of vitality, a bucket of connection and a bucket of contribution. Using science-backed and actionable tips, he shows the reader how to fill each of these buckets in just 30 days. Tap into your purpose, the book advises, and do meaningful work in order to vastly improve your life and find maximum happiness. 5. Getting Grit: The Evidence-Based Approach to Cultivating Passion, Perseverance, and Purpose byCaroline Miller Positive psychology author and coach Caroline Miller believes our level of grit is fundamental to living a fulfilled life. This guidebook to building grit offers self-assessment tools, daily exercises and life tips to boost courage and willpower. She explores the key traits of gritty people, how true grit inspires others and how humility and self-compassion also play a role in authentic grit. 6. The Dog's Guide to Your Happiness: Seven Secrets for a Better Life from Man's Best Friend by Garry McDaniel and Sharon Massen Want to be happier? Look to your pooch! Our canine companions can show us what authentic joy is truly about, say authors Garry McDaniel and Sharon Massen, both professors at Franklin University. The book explores seven traits that are essential for happiness through the eyes of our trusted furry friends. We can learn how to let go of stress, the book advises, and get lost in the art of play by watching our dogs just do their thing. Our furry friends can also show us the value of loyalty and unconditional love. 7. At Home in the World: Stories and Essential Teachings from a Monk's Life by Thich Nhat Hanh Put the power of hope to work in your life. Peace activist and Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh draws from his travels as well as stories and traditions from his childhood in rural Vietnam to share important life insights and lessons. “Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today,” he writes. 8. Mindshift: Break Through Obstacles to Learning and Discover Your Hidden Potential by Barbara Oakley, Ph.D. Learn how to uncover and develop talents you don’t realize you had—no matter what your age or background. Instead of just following your passions, discover how to broaden your passions. InMindshift, Barbara Oakley, Ph.D., draws on neuroscientific insights to turn perceived weaknesses into strengths and overcome preconceptions with the right mindset. Feeling behind if you start a new career path later in life? Use the skills you’ve already acquired to bring valuable insights to a new discipline. 9. The Leading Brain: Powerful Science-Based Strategies for Achieving Peak Performance by Friederike Fabritius and Hans W. Hagemann Use the latest research in brain science to improve how you perform and iteract at work. Combining their expertise in neuropsychology and management consulting, neuropsychologist Friederike Fabritius and leadership expert Hans W. Hagemann, Ph.D., show how to sharpen your focus, improve your performance, retain information, make better complex decisions and cultivate trust to build strong teams. 10. The Big Picture: A Guide to Finding Your Purpose in Life by Christine B. Whelan If you’ve ever wondered what you are going to do with your life, this book is for you. Though aimed at college graduates, The Big Picture is a guide for anyone who would like to discover their talents and create a fulfilling career and life. Author Christine B. Whelan, Ph.D. uses quizzes and leading questions such as, "What are my talents? How can I use them to help others and create meaning? in order to help each reader find a path to a purposeful life. Sandra Bienkowski is a regular contributor to Live Happy and the founder and CEO ofTheMediaConcierge.net.

Self-Care

How to Build Your Best Life

In 2007, a group of students at Stanford University’s design institute took on a daunting challenge: Design a low-cost incubator to save the lives of premature infants who were dying from hypothermia in poor countries like Nepal. While still on the Palo Alto, California, campus, the students began considering ways they could lower the cost of incubators by reducing the number of parts or using cheaper materials. But when they got to Nepal, they observed that many of the donated $20,000 incubators in large urban hospitals weren’t being used. And, as they traveled around the country, they noticed that the premature infants who needed those incubators were being born in remote areas. Saving their lives wasn’t a matter of retooling incubators but addressing a different problem: How could preemies in Nepal be kept warm enough in their towns and villages during their critical first days of life to survive? The students went on to create a miniature sleeping bag with a removable pouch that contained a waxlike material. When the pouch is heated in boiling water, the wax becomes a liquid, providing hours of insulated warmth without electricity. The device, called Embrace, costs just over 1 percent of what an incubator costs. It has since been used in 11 countries and has saved the lives of tens of thousands of low-weight babies. Exploring new pursuits A few years ago, Claudia Brown, a high-tech sales executive, was shifting into life as an empty nester. Open to exploring new pursuits, she began asking lots of people about the kinds of things they found interesting. On a visit to a state park near her home in Santa Cruz, California, she chatted with the guide who was leading a talk about elephant seals. Claudia had never heard of elephant seals before, but she loved animals and she loved the outdoors. What do you like about being an elephant seal docent, she asked? How much training does it take? If I wanted to become a docent what would be the first step? It turned out that there were five small steps before committing to the 25-hour training class. Claudia took those steps, one by one, and today she’s an elephant-seal expert and a docent at Año Nuevo State Park, home to one of the largest breeding colonies in the world for the pinniped. Saving lives with a tiny sleeping bag and finding meaning through work as a wildlife docent were the answers to problems from vastly different arenas. But those two solutions were arrived at through the same process: design thinking. It’s a human-centered approach to product design and problem solving that’s based on practices like understanding a problem through rigorous observation, generating tons of ideas with uncensored brainstorming and going out in the real world to explore and test possible solutions. Design thinking is the linchpin of Stanford’s design program. Formally named the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, it’s widely dubbed simply “the d.school.” The strategy has helped countless engineers and entrepreneurs develop innovative products and launch startups. It has also helped students flourish through classes that teach them how to design a creative, healthy and happy life the same way product designers would take on developing, say, the next-generation smartphone. Change your mindset The mindset of design thinking “aligns beautifully” with the principles of positive psychology, says Dave Evans, co-author with Bill Burnett of the new best-seller Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life. Bill and Dave based their book on their hugely popular Stanford class “Designing Your Life.” Both the class and book rely on positive psychology tenets like finding flow and silencing your inner critic to take a playful, improvisational approach to creative problem solving. “We have drawn many of our ideas and exercises from the work of the positive psychology movement, and especially from the work of [premier positive psychologist] Martin Seligman,” Bill and Dave write in their book’s “Notes” section about elements from a key chapter. Bernard Roth, Ph.D., one of the founders of the d.school, its academic director and the author of The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life ,believes that positive psychology and design thinking share a bedrock optimism. “In design thinking, we see our lives as something we can study and change,” he says. “You’re never stuck. It’s a can-do approach, a maker mentality, that you can apply to all domains of your life to become happier.” Reframing questions and faulty beliefs Design thinking puts as much emphasis on problem finding as it does on problem solving. If you’re losing sleep over a problem you can’t seem to solve, you’re likely working on the wrong problem. That happens, Bernard says, “when we think we’re dealing with a question when, in fact, we’re dealing with an answer that turns out not to be a good fit to our actual problem.” The question of “how to build a cheaper incubator,” for example, was an answer that didn’t address the problem of helping preemie infants in Nepal survive in their remote villages. One way to uncover the real dilemma is to ask, “What would it do for me if I solved this problem?” Say, for example, you’re grappling with the question, “How can I find a romantic partner?” If you ask yourself what finding a partner or spouse would do for you, one answer might be that a partner would make you less lonely. Next, you reframe your original question to, “How might I feel less lonely?” That dramatically expands the number of possible solutions. You could, say, take classes, join a club, get a dog, volunteer and check out some meet-up groups tailored to your interests. Another way we get tripped up, Bill and Dave point out, is by becoming mired in what they call “gravity problems.” A gravity problem is a fact of life, like the force that makes it difficult to ride your bike up steep hills. Or, say, you want to be promoted to CEO but the family-owned company where you work hasn’t named an outsider to its executive ranks in the five generations it’s been in existence. In life design, if something isn’t actionable, it’s not a problem. When you accept that, you’re free to work around the circumstance and find something that is actionable. A huffing-and-puffing cyclist might invest in a lighter bicycle or work on improving her stamina. The family-firm outsider could look for a job with a larger company or celebrate the freedom that comes with not taking on additional responsibilities and find an outside activity—taking a board position with a local charity—that provides the leadership role he’s seeking. While asking the wrong question leads us to dead ends, dysfunctional beliefs keep us stuck in place. These are the myths we tell ourselves that are both false and nongenerative. Reframing them is a key step in designing your life. Some examples that Dave and Bill offer: DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEF: If you are successful, you will be happy. REFRAME: True happiness comes from designing a life that works for you. DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEF: It’s too late. REFRAME: It’s never too late to design a life you love. DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEF: I have to find the one right idea. REFRAME: I need a lot of ideas so that I can explore any number of possibilities for my future. DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEF: I need to figure out my best possible life, make a plan and then execute it. REFRAME: There are multiple great lives (and plans) within me, and I get to choose which one to build my way toward. DYSFUNCTIONAL BELIEF: I finished designing my life; the hard work is done and everything will be great. REFRAME: You never finish designing your life—life is a joyous and never-ending design project. The art of ideating “You’ll choose better,” Bill and Dave say, “when you have a lot of good ideas to choose from.” That’s why a key element of design thinking is “ideation,” which simply means coming up with a whole slew of ideas. That includes wild and crazy notions, which might not be the fix you’re looking for, but will open you to inventive possibilities. “Mind mapping” is a visual aid to free associating that can help you tap into your idea-generating genius. David Kelley and Tom Kelley, brothers and co-authors of Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, say they use mind mapping all the time to encourage innovative thinking in both work and home life. (David was one of the creators of the d.school as well as the founder of IDEO, an award-winning global design firm. Tom is a partner at IDEO and an executive fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.) “From coming up with ideas for a family vacation to identifying home projects to tackle over the weekend,” they write, “mind maps can be used for all sorts of problem solving.” To create a mind map, all you need is a large piece of paper, a pen and as little as 10 minutes (set a time limit for yourself; doing the exercise quickly is important). For example, David followed the four steps of mind mapping when he was planning a dinner party. 1. Write your central topic or challenge in the middle of the page and circle it. David wrote, “A great dinner party with friends.” 2. Jot down five or six things—the first things you think of—that are related to the central theme. David’s mind map included “everyone in the kitchen,” “make your own sundaes,” “teach something” and “get them out of their comfort zone.” 3. Generate new words and thoughts from the first words that came to mind. Keep going until you have at least three or four layers of word associations. Your time limit will force you to “bypass your inner censor,” as Bill and Dave say, and write whatever comes to your mind first. 4. After your time limit is up, look at your mind map and highlight some words or concepts that jump out at you. You’ll likely find that the outer perimeter of the mind map holds the most innovative ideas, since it’s a few steps away from your automatic thinking. For David, the outer layer included such unlikely ideas as “indoor picnic,” “henna tattoos for all,” “everyone must make a hat on arrival” and “each person assigned to introduce another to the group.” What the mind map made clear was that David wanted lots of interaction at his dinner party, even among people who hadn’t previously met. He ended up throwing a party in which guests changed tables after each course, so everyone in the room got a chance to talk to each other. Moving from ideas to action Design thinking might better be called design doing. That’s because it has a strong bias to action. “When you’re designing your life, you can’t think your way there,” says Dave, “you can only live your way there.” The way you do this is through a process called “prototyping.” In design thinking, prototyping doesn’t mean creating mock-ups or dollhouse-sized models. Rather, it’s getting off your sofa to engage with the real world and have prototype conversations or prototype experiences. “Prototypes are little time machines,” Dave says. “They allow us to sneak up on the future.” When Claudia was chatting with the docent she met at the state park, she was prototyping. The bar is set low for prototypes. “You don’t have to know what you want to do with the rest of your life,” Dave says.“You don’t have to know who you are, what your purpose in life is or what your passion is. All you need is one question about which you’re a little bit curious and then you go out into the world and have some small interactions to explore where that question might take you.” Let’s imagine the question you’re pondering is pretty significant: how to make a midlife transition into a new career after 20 years in finance. You create a mind map and pick out some key words from the edges of the map. Say, “petits fours,” “Paris” and “apron.” Those words suggest some curiosity about studying pastry making at a culinary school in Paris. OK, you’re not ready to leave your family and spend a year at Le Cordon Bleu. But you could have a conversation with the woman who sells those beautiful French macarons at the farmers market. Maybe she teaches macaron-making every other Saturday. Or, perhaps, you could spend a day shadowing the owner of Le Croissant, the bakery where you’ve been stopping every morning for years on the way to your finance job. If you enjoy the experience at Le Croissant, you might sign up for a class in startups at the new culinary incubator in the next town. Or, your curiosity might be piqued by the conversation you have with the event planner who stops to pick up a cake for a gala. Her nonprofit builds shelters for women fleeing domestic abuse. Maybe you could join the planning committee for the new shelter; with your finance background, you could certainly help with fundraising. Or, perhaps you could help teach a baking class to the shelter residents. The world suddenly seems a much larger, more diverse and welcoming place. Designers imagine things that don’t yet exist, Dave and Bill say. Then they build them and the world changes. With life design, you can do this in your own life. “You can imagine a career and a life that doesn’t exist; you can build that future, and as a result your life will change,” they write. “If your life is pretty perfect as is, life design will still help you make it an even better version of the life you currently love living.” Shelley Levitt is a freelance journalist living in Southern California, and an editor at large for Live Happy.

science

What Can Telomeres Tell Us?

For years, scientists have known that telomeres—the caps at the end of each strand of DNA—protect our chromosomes and affect how quickly and how well our cells age. As telomeres wear away, it affects our aging process, which explains why some people seem to age faster than others. Telomeres shorten as we age, but things like smoking, lack of exercise, a poor diet and stress also can shorten them. The good news is, just as certain habits can wear away at our telomeres and expedite the aging process, there are things we can do to lengthen them. And the even better news is that many of these practices will bring more happiness just by making them part of your life. Change Your DNA “The little things we do each day can add up to have big effects on telomeres,” explains Elissa Epel, Ph.D., who co-authored the book The Telomere Effect with Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D., winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for her groundbreaking discoveries on telomeres’ role in aging. Elissa says that an increasing amount of attention is being given to how habits like gratitude, meditation and happiness can influence telomere length. “We are talking about small habits during our life that really add up to healthy cell stability later in life, when we are typically so vulnerable to diseases of aging,” Elissa says. “People with longer telomeres are 20 percent less likely to develop heart disease.” While she advocates a healthy diet with lots of vegetables, Elissa’s prescription for longevity also differs from the traditional “eat right and exercise” approach. Much of living longer and happier is about changing our response to stress and minimizing negative thoughts. “Mindset and mental health are some of the most important parts of healthy aging,” she says. “We can’t forget the daily work of good, healthy habits…but fewer people realize that where we put our attention is also critically important.” Minimize Stress and Work on Well-Being Focusing on positive things, regardless of the situation, and finding ways to fully engage with life has a proven association with longer telomeres. Practices like meditation, tai chi and qi gong can reduce stress and increase the production of telomerase, an enzyme that replenishestelomeres. “When we can’t change stressful situations, we have to live with them more gracefully,” she says. “It’s hard to totally escape wear and tear. But there are different ways one can live with a difficult situation.” She recommends focusing our attention on positive things—even when there’s a lot of negative things happening—and to engage with our lives in real time. “Stress and aging are, in a sense, close friends. Chronic psychological stress can speed up aging in many ways, including by increasing inflammation in our blood slowly over time, and shortening our telomeres.” Adopting healthy physical and mental practices, however, can offset some of those effects. “They…are stress-buffering and essential,” Elissa says. “They are not just ‘good’ for you, they are critical for your survival and health span.” Read more: Be Happy to Live Longer Listen to our podcast: Tips for a Long and Healthy Life With Merlin Thomas Paula Felps is the Science Editor for Live Happy.

Self-Care

5 Tips to Transform Your Life in the New Year

The holidays have left as quickly as the visit from St. Nick, and you may be feeling a little out of sorts. The New Year is perfect for fresh starts, but resolutions have a reputation of not lasting past the first quarter. We have assembled a few life tips from the pros to help you make real and positive changes that last. Finance Money can be a huge source of negativity. Many of us overspend in December and feel guilt and anxiety when the bills arrive in January. Leanne Jacobs, a holistic wealth expert and author of Beautiful Money: The 4-Week Total Wealth Makeover, says debt management takes strength and should be handled with confidence and a positive attitude: “Debt has an ability to consume your entire life as well as your state of mind and emotions. Often people will forget that although they carry debt, they aren’t themselves debt. There can be a lot of shame around being in debt, leaving one feeling inadequate.…Staying positive will help with goal setting, confidence, discipline and persistence—all requirements for getting out of debt in a timely way.” Leanne's Tips for Tackling Anxiety About Debt: Create a vision board that includes many images of what your life will look and feel like when you are debt-free. Designate someone you love and trust to hold you accountable. Keep tools in your back pocket to draw on when you are having moments of panic and fear. These might include yoga, meditation, exercise, nature hikes and journaling. Fitness Getting back into shape after your calorie-packed, end-of-year gatherings can be overwhelming. But, with the right mindset, says Steve Kamb, author of Level Up Your Life and creator of Nerdfitness.com, you can “focus on building a healthy habit daily, and your weight will start to take care of itself.” In his book, Steve writes that people often decide to get back in shape for extrinsic reasons and tend to focus on immediate results. “That small number on the digital scale starts to influence your self-worth. We feel amazing if it goes down half a pound, and downright miserable if it goes up a pound,” he says. “Instead of focusing on the scale or the end goal, focus on each day’s tiny goals and make the goal performance based.” Try to find a workout that is fun for you: Zumba, running, weightlifting, yoga or training to be the next American Ninja Warrior. “The goal is getting healthy and happy permanently, no more roller coaster diet boom and bust!” Steve's List for Your "Epic Quest of Awesome": Small, consistent victories. No more diets; no running yourself ragged on a treadmill for a few weeks to get in shape for the summer. Instead, start with small changes that you can live with permanently. Consistently push yourself just slightly outside of your normal behavior toward more healthy choices. Cultivate discipline. Get junk food out of your house. Program your workouts into your calendar. Recruit a friend to keep you accountable. Food We are going to have to find a way to get along with our food choices. Lynn Rossy, Ph.D., a health psychologist and the author of The Mindfulness-Based Eating Solution: Proven Strategies to End Overeating, Satisfy Your Hunger, and Savor Your Life, says we shouldn’t be so hard on ourselves for eating more and moving less. “When you have a healthy relationship with food, you realize that food is mainly to take care of physical hunger....Your other hungers for connection, creativity, movement, fun, etc., are not met with food,” she says. “When you meet your other hungers with appropriate solutions, you will create a more meaningful and happy life.” Lynn's Tips for a Healthy Relationship With Food Don’t set unrealistic rules for yourself. In fact, don’t set any rules. You’ll only be setting yourself up to fail and be discouraged. When you eat to meet your taste needs, you realize that you don’t have to overeat because you can always have tasty food whenever you want it and you can eat it sensibly. Every day, decide to see the bright side. Ponder this miracle of life and ask yourself, “How can I respect this body I’ve been given for another day?” Meaning When life’s burdens seem too heavy, it helps to look at things through the right prism. Finding what’s most important to us and attaching ourselves to something larger in life means we are actively seeking out happiness. Heather Lende, obituary writer and author of Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons From a Small-Town Obituary Writer, has written more than 400 obituaries in her life, a good number of them for people she knew personally. Through her work, she’s learned that the people who are bold enough to fully live their lives are the happiest. “It’s the people who make and keep good relationships that are what I would call the most successful on the happiness scale. They are also the most generous and often praised for kindness and their ability to forgive. Those are the people I admire the most.” Heather's Hints for Finding More Meaning: Smile more and share kind words. Quit checking your phone. Leave it on the table and go for a walk. Connect with others. Get out of your comfort zone and volunteer at a community center or hospital, an animal shelter or local park. Work Shola Richards, a certified Emotional Intelligence practitioner, creator of the blog The Positivity Solution (thepositivitysolution.com) and author of Making Work Work: The Positivity Solution for Any Work Environment, points out that we spend more than 80,000 hours at work. “The thought of spending the majority of those hours locked in a miserable environment with people who we don’t like or respect is horrifying to me,” Shola says. “On a positive note though, enjoying our work has shown wide-ranging benefits from improved health to increased productivity. Everyone wins when we enjoy what we do for a living.” Shola's Advice for Getting the Most Out of Work: One the best ways to ease the transition from the lull of the holidays to the hustle of the New Year is having meaningful friendships in the workplace. The most common negative trap to avoid is the soul-destroying habit of chronic complaining. We should vent if we must, but we can never lose sight of the fact that positive outcomes at work will elude us if we focus energy on our problems instead of possible solutions. Reduce the amount of toxic influences in our lives. If being on social media is stressing you out or is making you feel bad about yourself, then stop. Chris Libby is the Section Editor at Live Happy magazine.

Lifestyle

Revolutionize Your New Year’s Resolutions

If you recently set some audacious goals for the new year, good for you! You are among the 45% of Americans who took the plunge to write down your goals, and research shows that simply writing down your goals makes you 42% more likely to achieve them. However, as a rational optimist, I need to level with you: research also shows that only 8% of individuals who set resolutions actually achieve them. I don’t say this to discourage you, but rather to call you to the mat. Are you ready to rise above the naysayers and make your dreams a reality? If so, read on. To make positive, sustainable change in your life, here are five strategies to help you reach your goals—and make them stick! 1. Focus on one goal While you might be tempted to tackle twenty new habits all at once, research shows that homing in on just one habit is far more effective. Practice that habit for 21 days in a row until it becomes ingrained; then you can pick up another habit to try. 2. Understand your motivation Rather than just pursuing a goal because you feel like you ought to do something, take a moment to connect why you want to do something. To help you do so, check out the Live Intentionally app that helps you prioritize your schedule around your intentions for the day. 3. Remember that practice makes perfect Falling off the horse is part of the learning process; getting back on the horse is where change happens. Cognitive brain training programs like Happify can help reinforce positive thinking and give you new skills to help accomplish your goals. 4. Involve others Consider setting goals with a group or sharing your personal goals with close friends to increase your level of accountability. Social support is important to long-term success and happiness, so tap into one of your most powerful success accelerants by finding friends who share similar goals with you. Apps like MyFitnessPal have built-in tools to share goal progress and to encourage your friends. 5. Track your progress Keep a log of your progress. While some people love to track habits with pen and paper, there are also a number of amazing apps that can help you see your progress over time. In advance of writing this blog, I decided to test out as many apps aimed at habit change as I could. What I learned through this process was that selecting an app to help me build positive habits was equally as hard as doing the habits themselves. There are about 100 apps on the market, ranging from free to $5 per month, and most look incredibly similar. So how do you know which apps are best? Let me save you some time and energy by sharing a few of my favorites by their core values. If you are looking for a goal tracker that is Simple—check out Productive or Balanced Fun—check out Habitica or Habitify Informative—check out Way of Life Good, but expensive—check out Strides or Habitloop While no app can’t make you achieve your goals, if you are like me, you need all the help you can get. Positive sustainable change begins with mindset and ends with action. Let’s make this the year that we beat the odds and truly stick to our goals and resolutions! If you need some extra social support and encouragement, you can find me on social media @amyblankson, where I regularly post encouraging tips and happy hacks to help you balance well-being in the digital era. Amy Blankson, aka the ‘Happy Tech Girl,’ is on a quest to find strategies to help individuals balance productivity and well-being in the digital era. Amy, with her brother Shawn Achor, co-founded GoodThink, which brings the principles of positive psychology to lifeand works with organizations such as Google, NASA and the US Army. Her upcoming book is called The Future of Happiness: 5 Modern Strategies for Balancing Productivity and Well-being in the Digital Era (April 2017).

Well-Being

Make This Holiday Season Better Than Perfect

The most wonderful time of the year isn’t all that wonderful for many. Heightened stress, depression and anxiety can be as constant as the holiday songs belting out in stores. Why does sadness prevail for so many during the holidays? For about 10 million Americans, the cause is Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a type of clinical depression that occurs in late fall/early winter and lasts through spring. For many more, however, the distress is subclinical, meaning it interferes with life but doesn’t prevent you from functioning. Kick the all-or-nothing mentality In my practice as a therapist (and, admittedly, in my own life), much holiday woe can be traced back to a common denominator: perfectionism. Perfectionism is not just having a tidy junk drawer. It is an all-or-nothing mentality. For a perfectionist, something is either perfect or a failure, as it should be or terrible, like everyone else or miserable. You may not think of yourself as a perfectionist, but it’s possible that perfectionism gets in the way of your holiday cheer. Pay attention to language. How often do you say (even internally) the word “should” when thinking about the holidays? For example, “I should buy everyone expensive gifts,” or “My family should offer to help out more.” The word “should” is a red flag that you are placing rigid expectations on yourself and others. This stringent, perfectionist thinking can cause a lot of distress when things don’t go as you think they “should.” Same stress, only stronger. While you may not get along that well with your family during the rest of the year, your negative exchanges during the holidays can cause the greatest disappointment. The same goes for loneliness. You might not typically go out much, but the lack of get-togethers during the holidays carries more of a sting. Or maybe your credit card debt is as big as Santa’s belly, but during the holidays you’re more upset because you can’t buy your loved ones everything they want. The holidays bring heightened—perhaps unrealistic—expectations of conviviality, and when those expectations aren’t met, our unhappiness is magnified. Sacrificing health When it comes to health and wellness, do you engage in all-or-nothing thinking, such as, “I had one cookie, so I might as well eat the rest of the plate” or “I have no time to go to the gym, so no exercise for me until January”? Another reason people tend to get the blues during the holidays has to do with health and lifestyle. ’Tis the season for late nights, libations and lots of sugary calories. Unfortunately, lack of sleep, alcohol and sugary processed foods are linked to depressed mood. Make it “Better Than Perfect” You put all your energy into making that one day amazing, spending hours planning, preparing and feeling excited. Then the day comes…and goes. A happiness hangover can take over when the event you anticipated for so long is now in the past. Again, an all-or-nothing mindset. So, what can you do to overcome this all-or-nothing approach? Be better than perfect. Better than perfect means dropping the rigid expectations and judgments. Instead, keep your attention on what is important to you. Here are four steps to do just that: 1) Focus on the positive While it may be easy to point out what is wrong (“Did cousin Krista really say that!?”), it can still make you feel lousy. Try turning it around by focusing on what you appreciate about people and experiences over the holidays. Yes, Krista really does forget to filter what she says, but she did bring her delicious fudge. Gratitude is a quick and easy way to boost your happiness. Read more: 8 Easy Practices to Enhance Gratitude 2) Create better than perfect health Get your sleep and take time to exercise and meditate. It doesn’t have to be perfect. If you can’t get to the gym for a workout, try doing 30 jumping jacks. Does the thought of sitting and meditating for 20 minutes seem impossible? Try taking five deep breaths. It is better than perfect. 3) Give meaningfully When it comes to giving gifts, there’s no need to spend a ton of money or obsess over the details. Consider something meaningful, such as making a photo album or personalized calendar rather than splurging on an expensive present. Read more: 17 Ways to Give Back According to Your Strengths 4) Out with the old and in with the new Just because you’ve always done something a certain way doesn’t mean you need to continue. Drop unwanted holiday burdens and start new traditions important to you. Maybe you’d like to start volunteering as a family. Perhaps you’ve decided to stop sending out holiday cards because they cause you too much stress. Maybe you’d like to institute a new tradition of hosting a potluck meal rather than doing it all yourself. Learn from the past: Make the changes necessary to create a truly happy holiday for you and your loved ones. Make it a better than perfect celebration. Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and bestselling author of Better Than Perfect: 7 Strategies to Crush Your Inner Critic and Create a Life You Love. She had made many TV and speaking appearances, and is a coach and sought-after consultant. How much does perfectionism interfere with your life? Find out at BetterThanPerfectQuiz.com.

Confident woman working with a table saw.

Practice

Combat Depression and Anxiety With These Tools

Depression can make you feel like you are stuck in a black hole while the rest of the world goes about its day in a spray of sunshine, as usual—joyfully alive. In your mind, you may want to be happy, but the weight of darkness can feel insurmountable. For others, anxiety puts up roadblocks in the way of happiness. It appears out of nowhere, jittery and malignant, darkening a perfectly ordinary situation with a veneer of fear and dread. The World Health Organization reports that as many as 350 million people worldwide suffer from depression. Around 15 million Americans suffer from depression, and nearly half of those diagnosed with depression are also diagnosed with anxiety, according to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Even those who have never struggled with clinical depression or anxiety will have the occasional emotional crisis, blue mood or situational depression. While negative emotions can be helpful—by letting you know something isn’t right in your life—finding happiness isn’t possible unless you are equipped with emotional tools to overcome the weight of dark days. We turned to the experts to find out what emotional power tools they recommend to chip away at depression, reduce anxiety and become more mentally resilient so you can welcome happiness back into your life. Challenge your thoughts Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., psychologist, author and daughter of cognitive therapy founder Dr. Aaron Beck, says, “When you have depression you tend to understand your experience through black glasses instead of clear lenses. With depression, it’s important to stay active and be skeptical of any negative thoughts you might have. “Just because you think something doesn’t necessarily mean it is true,” says Judith. She suggests doing things that make you feel productive and in control, even when your mood is low and you don’t feel like it. According to Dr. David Burns, Stanford psychiatrist and author of the best-selling book Feeling Good, “our thoughts create all of our moods. When you are depressed and anxious, you are giving yourself negative messages; you are blaming yourself and telling yourself terrible things are going to happen. Distorted thoughts cause human suffering.” “Cognitive distortions are things like all-or-nothing thinking,” says David. “For example, if your performance falls short of perfect, you see yourself as a total loser. Or fortune telling, where you anticipate things will turn out badly and you treat your prediction as fact. Another cognitive distortion is mental filter, where you hone in on one negative detail and dwell on it exclusively so that your vision of reality becomes darkened. Or, disqualifying the positive by rejecting positive experiences—as if they don’t count for some reason.” Each of the 10 cognitive distortions that David has identified can be challenged with more positive and realistic thinking, talking back to your negative thoughts. David recommends what he calls a triple column technique to identify distortions in your thinking. Take a piece of paper and make three columns. In the first column, write down your negative thoughts. In the second column, identify the cognitive distortion, and in the third column challenge your negative thought. Examine the evidence and question whether your negative thought is really valid. When you change the way you think, you change the way you feel. Accept that you are imperfect The experts agree, perfectionism is a happiness killer. If you want to welcome a giant wave of calm into your life, accept that you don’t have to be perfect. There are so many stressful moments you could easily diffuse by whispering to yourself: “I don’t have to be perfect. I can just be me.” Self-acceptance is tied to mental resilience, says Judith. “Having unreasonable or rigid standards that continually outstrip reality is a recipe for a negative self-image and a lack of resilience.” Positive psychology expert Caroline Miller has drawn similar conclusions from her research. “People who are exposed to stories of other people’s hardships and how those people successfully overcame those hardships are more persevering and less likely to be self-critical,” Caroline says. “Carol Dweck’s (Stanford psychologist) work on fixed mindsets has also found that when you don’t see yourself as someone who is capable of change, you can’t deal with the prospect of failure, but people with a growth mindset are more forgiving of their mistakes because they see themselves as works of progress who are capable of making tremendous change.” “Aim for success and not perfection,” says David. “Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself to be human can make you a happier and more productive person.” Learn how to comfort yourself You probably know instinctively how to provide comfort to a child, a best friend or a beloved pet. But do you know how to comfort yourself? You can become better at self-compassion with practice. Judith suggests “being sensitive to the suffering of others as it will help you be compassionate toward yourself. Accept and acknowledge your own suffering. Work to relieve and prevent it by non-judgmentally caring for your own wellbeing.” Positive psychology expert and author Michelle McQuaid says, “Self-compassion is hugely important for mental resilience. Too often we turn to our inner critic as a means of motivating ourselves and fail to recognize that while this may get us moving in the short term, neurologically, over time, it actually undermines our motivation, confidence and willingness to pursue our goals.” Self-compassion, she says, allows us to recognize that like everybody else, we’re human and still learning. Say kind things to yourself in a compassionate way you talk to others. “When you show yourself self-compassion, it’s like having a good friend with you all the time,” writes Kristin Neff, Ph.D., in her book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself. When you feel a dark mood approaching or are having trouble getting through a rough time, here are 20 more tested, effective tools to fill out the rest of your kit: Embrace anxiety Don’t try to fight or eliminate anxiety, suggests Judith Beck. “Instead, watch it from a distance, evaluate your anxious thinking and correct it if it’s distorted. If it’s not, go to problem-solving. Act in accordance with your values. Avoid action or inaction that’s tied to fear.” Read more: 6 Steps to Win the War Against Worry Connect with people According to Michelle McQuaid, reaching out for social support can boost resilience. By courageously reaching out, you no longer feel alone, your vulnerability connects you with others, and you often realize everyone shares similar struggles. Read more: 8 Tips to Find Your Own Tribe Sleep on it Some days may be dark if you didn’t sleep well, if there’s a hormonal shift, or you are simply just having a bad day. A good night’s sleep can sometimes be enough to turn your entire outlook from negative to positive. Sit in silence Sometimes out of fear of feeling depressed or anxious, we can fill up our lives with being busy or fill up the silence with TV, but getting quiet with your thoughts can be a remedy for depression and anxiety. Silence can foster a state of calm and often give you enough mental space to have insights about your own life. Disconnect from the external Realize you always have a choice when it comes to your thoughts and outlook. Don’t lock your mood into something you can’t control such as how your work day is going or how much you get accomplished in a day. Make a choice to stay positive despite what may be going on around you. Schedule a favorite activity into your calendar When you are busy, you might postpone favorite activities like taking walks outside, having lunch with a friend or even something easy like listening to beautiful music. Your favorite activity is more than a luxury, it’s a powerful way to recharge. Schedule your favorite activities into your calendar like weekly appointments. Read more: Put Happiness on the Calendar Set boundaries Boundaries are our protective borders of what’s acceptable to us and what isn’t. By setting boundaries you are declaring that you will not let people exploit you, and that you are in charge of your own emotions. A boundary can be as simple as saying “No.” Don’t take things personally It’s hard not to take things personally. But we have the capacity to take a step back and realize that what others do and say—even if it is negative and aimed at us—usually has more to do with their own situations than ours. Change the channel “Gritty people have the talent of ‘changing the channel’ in their heads when they are heading toward depression or a desire to quit,” says Caroline Miller. For a quick lift, try posting positive messages and meaningful images in your home or office that you can turn to anytime. Make a happy, uplifting playlist on your phone that you can access when your mood is dragging—or you are stuck in traffic! Choose whom you spend your time with regularly Your closest associations affect you more than you might realize, so choose to spend time with people who are kind and uplifting. Studies show that many of our emotions and character traits—positive and negative—are contagious. Those who have more grit are less likely to fall into a depression spiral, according to Caroline. “And you can increase your grit,” she says, “by being around those who model better ways of dealing with impatience, challenges and pessimistic thinking.” Rewrite the story of you In his best-selling book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., writes that we can change our relationships to our thoughts and feelings by paying attention to the dialogues that stream through our minds. “The stories we tell ourselves give us implicit limits and possibilities,” he says. If your story is holding you back, consider a rewrite with what’s possible. Be aware of your body Michelle McQuaid suggests being “more aware of what our bodies are telling us. And tuning in to the moments when we are feeling overwhelmed or stressed to recognize that our body is trying to tell us that something isn’t unfolding in the way we hoped. We need to understand what is causing our unease and make informed and conscious choices about how we can lean into the situation and learn what is happening.” Journal your thoughts Journaling can be a highly cathartic process as it heightens your awareness of both your thoughts and feelings. When you journal, you connect with yourself and express emotions—two emotionally healthy practices for getting you out of a dark or anxious place. Read more: Write Your Way to Insight Reach out Whether you reach out to a good friend, your network or a licensed psychologist, give yourself permission to seek help. It’s brave to face darkness head on and be self-aware enough to know when you need help. Take care of your own needs Many of us are great at meeting everyone’s needs except our own. Moms, for example, rule at this. The only problem is, if your needs are always coming last, they are probably not being met at all. No one can operate positively—including taking care of others—when his or her own physical and emotional needs are taking a backseat. Activate your own needs. For example, if you start taking time to exercise, you invest in your own physical and mental health and you increase your energy. Or, if you carve out space to read a good book or do an activity you love, your outlook is more positive because you are taking time to recharge with your own interests. Read more: Why Self-Care Isn't Selfish Recognize your strengths To build your resilience, recognize your strengths by making a list and give yourself credit for everything that you do, Judith Beck suggests. Consider making a list of wins. Don’t seek escape Many of us try to ignore negative feelings or distract ourselves with alcohol, food or other self-destructive tendencies. Instead, Michelle McQuaid recommends, lean into your unease. “This may mean gently challenging the stories you’re telling yourself about what is happening or what might happen … and choose the story that serves you best. Engage your strengths to take constructive action,” she says. Avoidance of pain or discomfort leaves no room for learning or growth. Shake up the status quo Take time to deeply reflect on your life. Sometimes a major life event can cause this kind of introspection, other times all it takes is a question. Increased self-awareness can lead to a happier and more fulfilling path. Use these questions to start. Exercise Hello, endorphins, there you are. Make sure your workout is sweat-inducing because that’s when you really experience the physiological and mental benefits. Read more: 8 Great Happiness Perks You Get From Exercise Make positive choices Every choice you make from dawn to dusk impacts how you feel about yourself. Even tiny decisions matter. Become conscious of how each decision you make has the ability to uplift or the ability to detract from how you feel. Catch yourself speaking nicely about someone when that person isn’t even in the room. Follow through on a commitment you made to someone. Smile at a stranger walking by. Share dessert. Stop comparing yourself to others Ah, the comparison game. Facebook and Instagram make the comparisons of life’s highlight reels easy to do. Instead of making yourself feel badly because you think others have it better than you, realize you are idealizing people. Everyone has something they are struggling with but the challenges and personal struggles often don’t often make it into your newsfeeds. Choose to be happy for people and their good news while keeping a foot in reality. Everyone has something they are shouldering. As Judith says, “Work to see the best in yourself, others and in your future.” Read more: Nothing Compares to You Give up the disease to please If you set your outlook or self-worth on whether others like you, your mood will go up and down like a rollercoaster ride. Instead, accept that not everyone is going to like you and it isn’t your job to see that they do. Listen to your gut and give your own opinions more value. Count blessings rather than dwell on the negative You always have a choice. The next time a negative thought tries to settle in, start listing all the things in your life you feel thankful for and happy about instead. The best way to feel mentally strong and ready to fight for your own happiness is to see yourself as a work in progress and build up your emotional toolkit with what you’ve learned from your experiences. David Burns says there’s only one person who can ever make you happy, and that person is you. Listen to our podcast with Dr. Joshua Smith on How Expressive Writing Can Improve Your Happiness Sandra Bienkowski is a regular contributor to Live Happy and the founder and CEO of TheMediaConcierge.net.

Practice

Srikumar Rao Wants You to Feel Radiantly Alive

When Srikumar Rao was growing up in India and later in Myanmar, he chafed against his mother’s penchant for finding the silver lining in any situation. “She was very spiritual and had a very upbeat outlook on life,” Srikumar says. Whenever anything bad happened, Jaya Rao would give thanks that it wasn’t a lot worse. “It used to really irritate me,” Srikumar admits. That irritation persisted into adulthood. While attending Delhi University, Srikumar had an accident during a particularly fierce game of squash. Running at top speed to return a tough alley shot, he barreled into a wall head first. His glasses broke, the frame piercing his skin. He crumpled to the ground unconscious. Making matters worse, it was his birthday. Jaya gave the events her usual sunny spin. She was so grateful, she told her son, that he’d been with someone who was able to take him to the emergency room. And how lucky he was, she continued, that the steel eyeglass frame had merely inflicted a flesh wound instead of gouging out his eyeball. Bedrock optimism Decades later Srikumar would come to see the wisdom in what he calls his mother’s “bedrock optimism” and her faith in the benevolence of the universe. “I must have stored it somewhere,” he says. “What she was saying all those years suddenly made sense, and not just intellectually, but at a very deep level.” By then Srikumar was in his early 40s, teaching at Long Island University after he’d come to the United States to pursue his Ph.D. in marketing from Columbia University. At the time, he says, he felt burnt out and plagued by “gnawing insecurities, worries, anxiety, jealousies, irritations, guilt and apprehensions.” He began to cull insights from a lifetime of voracious reading, everything from ancient religious texts to the 1971 best-seller Be Here Now by new-age guru Ram Dass. He pored over philosophy texts, spiritual biographies and volumes by big thinkers in leadership, mindfulness and flow. For good measure, he read the novels of the British humorist P.G. Wodehouse. Pulling together these disparate threads, he developed a syllabus for a course with the ambitious goal of assisting people in transforming their lives—helping them to align their work with their interests and values, move toward optimism and warmer relationships and reconnect with their spirituality. “It was the course I needed for myself,” Srikumar says. Charting a course He wasn’t alone. Since 1994, thousands of people have taken the program Srikumar would come to call “Creativity and Personal Mastery,” or CPM for short. After teaching CPM at Long Island University and then Columbia University, he began offering it privately through The Rao Institute, largely to business executives and entrepreneurs. The exclusive course takes place over three highly intensive and interactive weekends and costs thousands of dollars. Now, at 65, Srikumar says he is eager for his work to reach a larger audience. “The reason I do what I do is I want everybody to get up in the morning and say, ‘Yippee!’ ” Inspiring those yelps was his motivation for recently self-publishing a paperback version (with an updated bibliography) of his book Are You Ready to Succeed? Unconventional Strategies for Achieving Personal Mastery in Business and Life, which originally came out in 2005. Your life did not just happen,” Srikumar says. “You experience life exactly as you have fashioned it. If you are unhappy with where you are, you can deconstruct the parts you don’t like and build them up again.” What keeps us from feeling “radiantly alive,” Srikumar says, is that we have spent our entire lives learning to be unhappy. Tripping us up are what he calls “mental models,” a jumble of fixed ideas about how the world works and how things should or shouldn’t be done that don’t serve us well. The book guides readers through a series of exercises that will help them become the architect of a life brimming with joy and fulfillment. Here are three exercises to kickstart your transformation: 1. Try out an alternate reality Divide a page into four columns headed “family,” “work,” “love” and “self.” For the next 10 minutes, without stopping, scribble down the first beliefs that come to mind under each of these areas. They can be anything at all. For example, “My boss always belittles my ideas” or “I’m too old to find love” or “I could never get hired for the kind of job I want.” Now, looking over your list, choose a situation troubling you right now; perhaps it’s working for your supercritical boss. Develop an alternate reality you can plausibly believe. You might not be able to accept that your boss is trying to encourage you to sharpen your ideas. But maybe you can be open to the possibility that having a difficult boss will give you the skills you need to excel in a competitive field. Over the next week, live as if the alternate universe you have created were real. Write down every piece of evidence that supports this parallel world. You might describe how your boss scoffed at something you said in a meeting and how you rose to defend your point of view. The payoff: In your alternate universe, you do not hand over your ability to be happy to someone else. Instead, you retain the power to focus on what’s important to you and you appreciate the strengths and resilience you gain from challenges. “As you live in one of these realities that you select,” Srikumar writes, “you will initially feel as though you are playacting. As you persist, that feeling of faking it will go away and it will actually become your new reality.” Read more: Are You Sabotaging Your Self-Esteem? 2. Swap the voice of judgment for a detached witness Devote two weeks to becoming aware of your “voice of judgment.” Srikumar says that this voice is one of the most common and pernicious types of “mental chatter” that plays in the backgrounds of our minds. The voice of judgment “does a darn good job of flattening you,” Srikumar says. Sometimes it puts you down directly: “You’re going to really mess up this project and be exposed as the big fraud you are!” Other times, it compares you unfavorably to someone else: “Carol is so quick on her feet; if you’d been asked that question in the meeting, you would have been tongue-tied and stammering.” Start observing your voice of judgment. It can be helpful to set your smartphone to beep every hour as a reminder to jot down your observations. Pay attention to how often you berate yourself and the impact this has on your ability to stick with a difficult task or stay engaged with other people. Don’t beat yourself up as you notice the negativity of your thinking; that will only increase the volume of the voice of judgment. The payoff: Your observing self is what Srikumar (and many teachers of mindfulness and meditation) calls “the witness.” Making friends with this dispassionate spectator shows you with clarity the many ways in which you undermine yourself. As you gain practice in cultivating your witness—and it’s a lifetime quest—you’ll be able to move through your days with much greater mindfulness and confidence. Read more: Give Yourself a Mindfulness Makeover 3. Invest in actions rather than outcomes Remember a moment when you experienced such extraordinary beauty that it took you outside yourself and to a place of great serenity. Perhaps it was a sunset. You didn’t say, “That’s a beautiful sunset, but it’s kind of off-center and if I could move it 200 yards to the right and Photoshop out some of the clouds, it would be so much more beautiful.” No, the off-center sunset was just fine. And in that rare moment of accepting the universe just as it was, Srikumar says, your innately happy nature bubbled up. Srikumar’s many years of study and of teaching have convinced him that our inborn nature is firmly tilted toward joy. Try to bring this mindset of acceptance to your daily life. It won’t be easy. For most of us, our default attitude on happiness is based on the “if-then” model: “If I get that big raise/have a second baby/spend a month in Bali, then I’ll be happy.” There are lots of problems with this way of thinking. For one thing, we’re pretty bad at predicting what will actually bring us happiness, as Harvard psychologist and researcher Daniel Gilbert, Ph.D., showed us in his book Stumbling on Happiness. For another, we can’t control outcomes. A better strategy: Let the goal you seek give you direction, but invest yourself completely in the process. That means do the best you’re capable of, without worrying about the end result, and embrace where the journey takes you. The payoff: You move through life with a greater sense of tranquility and purpose. “If you succeed in achieving your outcome, wonderful,” Srikumar says. “And if you don’t succeed, still wonderful, because now you have a new starting point, and from that new starting point, you select another outcome and keep going. And when you do that, you will find that every day is a blast.” Jaya Rao would approve. Listen to our Podcast with Srikumar Rao about How to Stop Negative Mental Chatter Shelley Levitt is a freelance writer based in Southern California, and an editor at large for Live Happy magazine.

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