Penelope Trunk on Training Yourself to be Happy

We can train ourselves to do so many things from being able to run 10 miles to speaking a foreign language to using a new computer program. So why not train ourselves to be happy? That's exactly what positive psychologists believe we can and should do.

Author/blogger Penelope Trunk has compiled a selection of tips for improving the happiness in your life from Senia Maymim. In short, "instead of focusing on what’s wrong with people, try focusing on what’s right with people -what makes people happy, successful and more productive." Here are five general categories for doing exactly that:

1. Increase our positive thinking.
The key to thinking positively is being optimistic. You can teach yourself to be more optimistic by teaching yourself to reframe situations by telling different stories.

2. Increase your positive emotions.
When you are feeling good, you can come up with more solutions to your problems. One way to increase positive feelings is to write a list of things you’re grateful for every night before you go to bed. Doing this actually changes how you think.

3. Increase your authenticity and your strength.
By the time most of us figure out what we are good at we think it’s too late to change what we’re doing. You’ll be happier if you are true to your strengths. Don’t make excuses for why you can continue doing something you’re not great at.

4. Increase your positive choices and decisions
Train yourself how to be at decision points, then you can simplify your life in a way that makes you choose better. Take going to the gym. If you tell yourself there is no choice but go to the gym then there is not a huge process of deciding what is most important each evening after work.

5. Increase positive habits.
If you do one positive thing in your life, there is spillover into other aspects of your life. Creating one positive habit encourages you to live your life more consciously and more positively all around.

The tips above are excerpts from this post, click through to Penelope's blog the complete article.

With regard to point five above, which I found the most fascinating, Senia cited this surprising factoid:

In a study by Roy Baumeister, college students who were asked to take better care of their finances for a few weeks found that they unexpectedly also found themselves going to the gym more often, eating better, and getting better grades.

If you've heard the expression about how do you eat an elephant? The answer is "one bite at a time." It appears that training yourself to be happy is similar. You don't have to change everything at once. In fact you can start out by picking just one area in your life to improve. The benefits from that self-regulation will have spill-over in other areas of your life making improvement in those areas easier next steps. I've seen this with people who take up exercise regimens, they often end up adopting better eating and sleeping habits at the same time. Senia's post notes that benefits extend to non-related activities as well such as studying or controlling finances.