Happy New Year! As this is often a time when we reflect on our past achievements and set new goals for the future, I’d like to share with you some of the latest positive psychology research which you may find helpful.

• Focus on creating approach goals

According to psychology research, avoidance goals (those with negative outcomes which we work to avoid) are stressful because constantly monitoring negative possibilities drains our energy and enjoyment, eventually taking its toll on our well-being. On the other hand if we set approach goals i.e. those with positive outcomes which we work towards, our focus is on achieving the presence of something positive, which is more energizing and enjoyable. According to psychologists this ultimately leads to greater well-being too.

• Increase your intrinsic motivation

Being intrinsically motivated (i.e. doing something because you want to, not because you have to) is an essential part of goal achievement. Intrinsic motivation can be increased by ensuring that, in identifying and pursuing your goal, three basic psychological needs are met:  i) control, ii) competence and iii) connection. If your goal is not freely chosen, how might you change it so that you increase the amount of control that you have?  To increase your level of competence, why not seek regular and constructive feedback on your performance from a trusted friend, colleague or mentor? And how might you ensure that you have positive support from those around you in achieving your goal?

• Develop your self-control and commitment

Fortunately for us, self-control is like a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. This means that being more disciplined in one domain of your life can help you develop greater self-control in other areas. The key to self-control is to try to create new habits which simply become part of your day-to-day routine; after a while you don’t need much self-control at all.

Research into goal commitment suggests that it makes a difference to your self-motivation whether you focus on the progress you’ve already made, or whether you focus on the things that you have left to achieve.

• If you are fully committed to your goal, you can maintain your self-motivation by focusing on what you have left to do

•  But if your commitment is less than 10 out of 10, you can increase your self-motivation by focusing on what you have already accomplished.

Finally, remember that not all goals are equal in the well-being stakes: make sure yours are intrinsic, congruent and in harmony with each other.

Image courtesy of lululemon athletica

In the Positive Psychology Masterclasses that I co-present with fellow University of East London MAPP graduate, Miriam Akhtar, the important role that gratitude plays in boosting well-being often comes up. Gratitude is active when people write thank-you letters, reflect on three good things at the end of the week, or simply say, “Thank you,” to someone (and really mean it).

But our participants often balk at the prospect of reading out loud a Thank You letter to the person they want to thank. It seems that this kind of overt display of positive emotion is a step too far. “Posting a letter is one thing,” said Katrina, “but I couldn’t stand in front of [Mrs  X] and read it out loud – way too embarrassing, for both of us!”

As it happens, we’re in good company here: Thank you, Sonja Lyubomirsky, for being honest enough to admit that expressing gratitude doesn’t float your boat either.

The Importance of Fit

During our MAPP programme, when we were assigned to test out various happiness-enhancing activities on ourselves and report back, we often argued about the idea of fitness. Some of us found that a particular exercise worked really well, and we may even have continued to practice it after our assignment was handed in, whereas other students couldn’t get on with it at all and stopped at the earliest opportunity.

In her book, The How of Happiness, Sonja Lyubomirsky devotes a whole chapter to the question of suitability, pointing out that although it’s widely accepted in the domains of diet and physical health, thinking about whether a particular approach will suit us isn’t something we often do when considering our emotional and psychological health.  She explains three elements of suitability: fit with the source of your unhappiness, fit with your strengths, and fit with your lifestyle. The advice is that choosing appropriately will vastly increase your chances of succeeding when you’re contemplating doing any exercises to increase your well-being.

On top of suitability, her new research with her colleagues Rene Dickerhoof and Julia Boehm (University of California, Riverside) and Kennon Sheldon (University of Missouri, Columbia) suggests there are two other important factors which influence your chances of increasing your happiness when you carry out an evidence-based happiness exercise: your motivation and the effort you invest.

Longitudinal Study

In this study involving approximately 330 students, Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues gave participants two choices: they could choose to participate in a happiness intervention or they could choose to participate in a cognitive exercises study. Participants in both groups were randomly assigned to one of two empirically-validated positive exercises or to a control activity, each of which involved writing for 15 minutes per week for 8 weeks, as described below:

• Evidence-based exercise 1: Expressing optimism by writing about an imagined future ideal self
• Evidence-based exercise 2: Expressing gratitude by remembering times when you were grateful to another person and writing a letter to that person (but not sending it).
• Control Activity: Writing about what you did in the past 7 days

Well-being was assessed using a range of measures at the start of the study, at the end of the 8^th week, and again another 6 months later. The degree of effort and energy that participants put into their writing exercises every week was assessed by independent coders who ranked it on a 7 point scale.

The Motivation Effect

The researchers interpreted self-selection into the happiness intervention group as an indication of motivation to become happier. They hypothesized that that the ones in the happiness intervention group that performed one of the positive exercises would report greater gains in well-being than those in the cognitive exercises group, even though they completed exactly the same empirically-validated happiness activities. They predicted that participants in the experimental conditions in both groups would report greater gains in well-being than those in the control condition.

The Effort Effect

Researchers also predicted that those participants who exerted more effort would demonstrate a greater boost in their well-being compared to those who exerted less effort, and that the effort effect would be strongest in the two experimental conditions and weakest or non-existent in the control condition.

The Results

As a whole, combining both happiness intervention and cognitive exercise groups, there was no significant difference in the well-being levels of the participants who completed the two empirically-validated exercises compared to the control group either at the end of the 8^th week, or at the 6 month follow-up.

Given that expressing gratitude and optimism have been shown in other studies to increase well-being, this may come as a surprise. The researchers explain this in terms of the role played by one’s motivation to be happier. In other studies, all participants were interested in increasing their own happiness and were aware that this was the purpose of the study. In this research, some participants thought they were signing up for cognitive exercises, but at the start were told that the aim of the study was to improve well-being. In other words, it may be that expressing optimism or gratitude is simply not as meaningful or useful to people who aren’t motivated to practice them.

At the end of 8 weeks the happiness intervention participants reported greater increases in well-being compared to the participants in the cognitive exercise group. The happiness intervention participants who completed the positive exercises reported greater increases in well-being compared to both the cognitive exercise participants who did the same exercises and to those in the control condition.

After 6 months, the happiness intervention participants who completed the positive activities reported greater boosts in well-being than those in the cognitive exercise group who practiced the same exercises and than those in the control groups.

What Role does Effort Play?

In terms of effort, as predicted, the results suggest that the amount of effort we use when practicing positive exercises such as expressing optimism or gratitude does affect subsequent gains in well-being, but doesn’t have a significant effect when we do a neutral or less meaningful activity, such as listing our previous week’s activities.

Research conclusion

The study results indicate that motivation to become happier (in this case demonstrated by self-selection into the happiness intervention group) and continued effort make a difference, but only in the two positive activity conditions, not the control.

Lyubomirsky and her colleagues conclude that happiness activities such as expressing optimism and gratitude are more than just placebos, but that they are more effective when participants are motivated to improve their well-being and put effort into doing them.

Summary

We can sum all of this up by saying that if you want to increase your happiness, there are three basic  rules you need to be aware of:

1. It’s important to do the right positive exercise.  It needs to be empirically validated, and it needs to be right for you. If expressing gratitude or optimism doesn’t do it for you, try something else.
2. You must be highly motivated to improve your well-being, and, if you’re working with clients, they need to be aware of purpose of the positive exercise. Sceptics need not apply!
3. There’s no getting away from it. You have to carry out the activity conscientiously and persistently. In other words, you need to invest time and effort into practicing. If you think you can take short cuts, forget it!

So with those three guidelines in mind, what will you do differently?

Lyubomirsky, S., Dickerhoof, R., Boehm, J. K., & Sheldon, K. M. (2011). Becoming happier takes both a will and a proper way: An experimental longitudinal intervention to boost well-being. Emotion, 11(2), 391-402.

Lyubomirsky, S. (2007). The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want. New York: Penguin Books.

Images

1. Gratitude: Kateausburn

2. Bright Optimism: Theen Moy

3. Day 25 Effort: Toastwife

Here’s a great animated video supporting Daniel Pink’s presentation on intrinsic motivation and why profit-related pay (PRP) doesn’t actually motivate people to work harder.

According to Pink, psychology research shows that economists have got it all wrong. If you want to motivate and engage people, and get them work harder, they need to experience the following 3 things at work:

1) AUTONOMY (i.e. being able to choose what you do and how you do it)
2) MASTERY (i.e. being able to get better at whatever you do – so there needs to be some challenge in the job), and
3) PURPOSE (i.e. being able to make a meaningful contribution. A profit motive is OK as long as it’s linked to a ‘purpose motive’).

Organisations which fit the bill include Skype (now owned by private investment company Silver Lake, and Ebay) and Apple.

Pink’s theory is that if we treat people like people, we can make organisations better off and make the world a better place.

Read the rest of this entry »

Positive Psychology often talks about the benefits that helping others can have on your well-being – you may have come across the phrase ‘random acts of kindness’. Research by Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues suggests that doing  a variety of random acts of kindness for other people, such as holding the door open or helping someone carry their shopping, can improve your well-being. Volunteering is also good for depression for example.

New research from Netta Weinstein and Richard Ryan (2010) suggests firstly that you need to be intrinsically motivated to help in order to derive these benefits for yourself, and secondly helping others when you’re extrinsically motivated (e.g. by reward or the fear of reprimand) is worse for their well-being than if you don’t help them at all.

Clearly this has implications for companies where excellent customer service is at the heart of their business. Are your customer service staff intrinsically motivated to help?

My article on Positive Psychology News this month covers this topic in more depth – read it here.

Image courtesy of D3 San Francisco

We were talking about this just the other day: so here’s an uplifting tale from the States (where else?) on the positive after-effects of losing your job.

The moral of the story? Write a best-seller about your experience, and sell the film rights!

Thanks to Caroline Rivka for the link

Image: Alex Cheek, reused under Creative Commons License