Chapter 5 was all about learning to calm your negative thoughts. Now it’s time to focus on the positive.

The activities in this chapter will help you appreciate the good things in your life now, and the good things you may not have been able to appreciate in the past. It’ll then help you look forward to a happier future. Drawing on the findings of both CBT and the new science of positive psychology, we’ll explain how to boost your positive thoughts, mental images, feelings and behaviours.

Even the way we use our body can affect the way we feel. For example, research has shown that nodding our head, in comparison with shaking it, can make us feel more positive about a previously neutral object! If we nod our head when learning a list of words, we’re better at remembering the positive words; if we shake our head, we’re more able to recall negative words. Other experiments have demonstrated that simply changing our facial expression, or posture, or hand and arm movements can influence our emotions.

What this shows is that we have much more power over our thoughts and feelings than we might imagine. We don’t have to wait for happiness to suddenly appear in our lives; we can help generate it ourselves.

WHAT’S GOING RIGHT FOR ME RIGHT NOW?

This is a very simple exercise developed by one of the leading psychologists of happiness, Barbara Fredrickson. All you need to do is pause, look around you and ask yourself: ‘what is going right for me right now?’ If you find it difficult to think of anything positive, try to keep going until you have at least one example.

Here’s an ordinary day, ordinary life kind of example:

• Beautiful weather outside
• Feeling rested and healthy
• Got some work done this morning
• Cat dozing on a nearby chair
• Looking forward to a mid-morning cup of coffee!

There are two really nice things about this particular activity. First is the fact that spending just a few moments focusing on the positive things in your current situation boosts your mood. Secondly, identifying what’s good in your life allows you to seek more of it. For example, though there’s not much we can do about the weather, we can note our satisfaction at a productive morning’s work and aim to reproduce that feeling as often as possible.

SAVOURING

Think of increasing your happiness as a skill: a set of strategies and techniques everyone can learn. One of the key components of that skill is the ability to recognise and savour the good things in life, no matter how small. By savouring we mean taking the time to notice, and delight in, an experience – to really kick back and bask in the pleasure of the moment, and to try to make that pleasure last.

Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift. OPRAH WINFREY

If you’ve completed the ‘What’s going right for me right now’ exercise on the previous page, you’ve already sampled the pleasures of savouring. You’ve applied a temporary brake to the passing of time. You’ve created a space in which you can look around and remind yourself of some of the pleasing features of your life. If we don’t learn to savour, it’s easy to take those features for granted or to miss them entirely.

The ‘What’s going right for me right now?’ exercise helps you to savour the present moment. There are other, very simple ways of doing this, too. For example, we can take a little time each day to really focus on what we’re doing and how we’re feeling. Give it a go when, for instance, you next eat a piece of fruit; spend time with friends; finish a piece of work you’re pleased with; or simply breathe the fresh air outside.

Try to take in every detail of the moment; revel in your enjoyment. What are your senses telling you? Focus on the precise taste of the fruit; feel the breeze play across your face; listen intently to your friends’ voices. Give yourself up to the moment; aim to inhabit it with your whole spirit.

Savouring isn’t merely something we can do in the present. We can savour the future and the past too. Whether it’s a holiday you’ve just booked, a meal you’re cooking for friends, a walk in the countryside, a massage, or a trip to buy new clothes, spend a few minutes each day actively looking forward to these treats. Allow yourself the luxury of a daydream, especially if you’re feeling low: thinking about future fun is sure to pick you up.

Even when the event you’ve looked forward to is over, it can still be a great source of pleasure. Make the effort to remember what happened and relish every little detail. Take photos. Relive the moment by reminiscing with friends. Perhaps write a brief note of what happened and, in particular, how much happiness it gave you.

If you can savour an experience beforehand, while it’s happening, and afterwards, think how far you’re making that pleasure go!

Happy memories make a brilliant pick-me-up. A nice idea suggested by the psychologist Sonia Lyubomirsky is to create a ‘savouring album’. Fill it with photos and other mementoes of all that is dearest to you in life – perhaps your friends, partner, children, pet, home, or souvenirs from a special holiday. Don’t bury the album away in a drawer; keep it somewhere accessible. Perhaps, as Lyubomirsky does, take it with you when you travel. That way, it’ll always be on hand when you need a lift.

GRATITUDE

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder. G.K. CHESTERTON

You’ve probably seen one of those famous ‘Love is…’ cartoon strips. Well, if we were creating a version on the subject of happiness it might read something like this:

Happiness is… always being thankful.

This is because one of the hallmarks of happy people is a deeply engrained sense of gratitude – to other people, for sure, but more broadly to life itself.

Perhaps, for example, you can remember waking up on a beautiful summer’s day. It was a Saturday. You felt rested and healthy. The week’s hassles and stresses had vanished overnight. Ahead of you was a day of relaxation and fun – perhaps a treat you’d been looking forward to for ages, or simply a quiet day pottering contentedly around the house. And, as you lay there in bed, feeling the sun warming your body, you thought to yourself: How lucky I am to be alive!

Or perhaps you can recall a time when you were suffering from flu. You struggled in to work, but by mid-morning you were feeling awful. Not only did your manager send you home, she took the time to drive you there herself. Over the next few days, friends brought you medicines and food and books and magazines. Each evening someone would phone to see how you were. You were so grateful for their efforts and thankful to have such good friends.

This is gratitude in action. We recognise, celebrate and treasure the many positive aspects to our life. And it feels great.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

For some people, gratitude seems to come naturally. But if you’re not among them, don’t worry: gratitude can be learned.

One very effective technique is simply to write down, every night for two weeks, five things in your life for which you are grateful. Those things can be as minor, or as important, as you like. For example:

• Really enjoyable lunch with colleagues at work.
• My cold has disappeared! I’m back on form now.
• Feel so lucky to have met my partner.
• Dad is recovering really well from his operation.
• Favourite programme on TV this evening!

At the end of those two weeks, how has your mood improved?

If you’re finding this activity helpful – and lots of people do – consider making it a part of your routine. Some people prefer to complete their gratitude log once or twice a week. Experiment, and go with what works best for you, but try to stick to a regular time – for example, writing every Monday night. That way, there’s less chance of it being crowded out of your schedule by other commitments.

Think too about taking your gratitude out into the world and directly thanking the people who contribute – in however small a way – to your happiness.

This isn’t just good manners; it’s about increasing the sum total of happiness in the world. And to do that, your gratitude has to be heartfelt. Doesn’t it feel good when someone thanks you? Isn’t it even better when they smile as well? The glow it transmits can last all day.

So, if someone moves aside to help you make your way down the bus, thank them. If your neighbour takes in a parcel while you’re out, thank them. And find a moment to thank those closest to you simply for being there. That may seem a bit too sentimental, but try it. You – and the people you thank – will feel all the better for it.

RECORDING THE POSITIVES

To savour the good things in life, it stands to reason that we have to be able to spot them. If we can’t see the positives, we can’t celebrate them.

But noticing the good stuff isn’t always easy, particularly on those days when we’re feeling down. If you’re finding it difficult at the moment, this exercise will help.

What we want you to do is keep a diary for seven days of the positive things you do or that happen to you. It needn’t be very time-consuming; all you have to do is make a brief note of the positive event and how it made you feel at the time. Look for the little details: perhaps a colleague helped you with a task, you had a pleasant walk home in the sunshine, or you enjoyed a great movie.

Here’s a format you could use:

And here’s an excerpt from a diary compiled by Sam, a thirty-six-year-old sales executive:

At the end of the seven days, make yourself a cup of tea, find somewhere quiet, and spend some time looking back over your diary. We think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at just how many nice things have occurred during the week, and at how often you’ve experienced a little frisson of enjoyment.

You’ll find too that keeping the diary has honed your pleasure-spotting skills. The next time something positive occurs – and you won’t have to wait long – you’ll notice it straight away.

OPTIMISM

Everything I’ve done I’ve done with enthusiasm and passion. Everything I turn up to, I think I’m going to enjoy. KEVIN KEEGAN

Many people think that optimism is something you’re born with: you either have it or you don’t. It’s true that optimism comes easier to some people than others, but optimism is a style of thinking – and styles of thinking can be learned.

This is great news. Almost by definition, when you think more optimistically you’ll feel more confident, more relaxed, and happier all round. But there are other advantages. For example, optimism helps us achieve our goals in life: we’re much more likely to keep going if we think we’ll be successful in the end. It helps us cope when times are tough. And at least two major research studies suggest that it can help us live longer too.

Optimism is all about our expectations for the future. If we’re optimistic, we expect that future to turn out well – both the big stuff (for example, living a long, happy and healthy life) and the comparatively insignificant (like whether the new recipe you’re trying out tonight will taste as good as it looks in the book).

At the heart of the optimistic (or pessimistic) style of thinking is a distinctive way of explaining negative and positive events, particularly in situations where the true cause isn’t obvious.

Putting it very simply, when something good happens to an optimist, they tend to assume it’s down to them. Perhaps it’s something they did, or a consequence of the way they are. Moreover, not only does the optimist think this particular good thing is likely to happen again, they’re confident that lots more good things will come their way in the future.

How does an optimist react to negative events? Their instinct is to see them as one-offs – things may have gone wrong on this occasion, but next time will be better. They may feel that it’s not their fault, but if they do decide they’re to blame they won’t beat themselves up about it. Instead they’ll be certain they won’t make the same error again.

A pessimist, on the other hand, is likely to react in exactly the opposite fashion. A positive event is a fluke that has nothing to do with them. A negative event is their fault, and an indication of what lies ahead in the future.

To take an example, let’s imagine that an optimist and a pessimist sit a maths test. They both achieve great marks. The optimist will believe their success is a result of intelligence, and be confident that they’ll fare well in other exams. The pessimist, however, will conclude that they just got lucky or scraped through because they worked much harder than everyone else. Rather than gaining confidence from their performance, they’ll fear the worst for future tests.

Some days later, our optimist and pessimist take a history test. Both score poorly. The optimist will conclude that the questions were misleading, or their answers misunderstood, or that their low mark is the result of chronic hayfever. They’ll be sure that the next time they take a history test they’ll do much better. The pessimist, however, will see the result as proof of how poor they are at exams, and will doubt that they’ll ever improve.

Take a moment to reflect on your own experience. Which approach do you most often use to make sense of the things that happen to you: the pessimistic or the optimistic? If it’s the pessimistic, you’re almost certainly too hard on yourself when events don’t go well and you don’t give yourself enough credit when good things happen. Setbacks seem like portents of the future and positive events like flukes.

If you’re prone to pessimism, take heart from the fact that you can change your typical thinking style. You can learn optimism. And when you do you’ll notice the positive effect on your mood.

A quick guide to developing the inner optimist

To become more optimistic, keep a close eye on the way you explain events. Make a conscious effort to adopt an optimistic style of thinking. With practice, it’ll develop into second nature. If you spot a pessimistic thought, challenge it using the techniques on pp. 62–3.

Here’s another exercise to boost your optimism. This one was developed by the psychologist Laura King and it involves imagining your ‘best possible future self’. Research has demonstrated that just carrying out this exercise alone produces significant increases in optimism.

For a fortnight, spend five minutes each day writing about how you see yourself a few years from now when all your hopes have been realised. You might, for instance, have the job you’ve always dreamed of. You might be living in your favourite city. You might be happily married with a strong network of close friends nearby.

Simply committing your hopes to paper is likely to make you feel more optimistic about the future. But you can also use the exercise to help turn those dreams into reality.

Once you’ve identified where you’d like to be in a few years’ time, think about the steps you’ll need to take to get there. You already have your long-term target, now add the short- and medium-term goals that will help you reach that objective.

Every few months revisit your ‘best possible self’ document. It’ll help you check that you’re still on course to meet your goals, and provide brilliant motivation if you find yourself flagging. You can remind yourself: this is where I’m going. This is worth working for. (Of course, if your priorities have changed, by all means amend what you’ve written.)

This technique of imagining future success can be used in all sorts of situations. Perhaps you have an interview for a job coming up. Maybe you’ve agreed to give a speech at a friend’s wedding. Or perhaps you need to have a difficult conversation with someone. Whatever the upcoming challenge, the trick is to visualise it turning out well. Include as much detail as possible, and rehearse your part as often as you can.

Visualisation is a staple of sports psychology. Many, many world champions have used it to help them achieve their goals. And it can work for you too.

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. BARBARA KINGSOLVER

As with all habits, changing from a pessimistic to an optimistic viewpoint can take a bit of time. If you usually point out the downsides to a situation, or have got used to balancing out someone you feel is too naively positive, you might find it tricky at first to alter your instinctive reactions. The trick is to:

• become aware of those pessimistic reactions
• avoid automatically accepting them; instead, pause, recognise what they are and challenge them: ask yourself what the evidence is for and against
• appreciate that there are other ways of looking at the situation
• consciously replace them with positive thoughts.

In time, you’ll find that optimism becomes your default setting.

SOUNDS AND MUSIC

Fans of The Simpsons may remember the episode in which Homer is misinformed that he has only twenty-four hours to live. As he listens to Lisa playing a melancholy tune on her saxophone, he breaks down in tears. This, you might think, is hardly surprising given his predicament.

Yet, as Lisa rapidly switches to an upbeat number, Homer’s mood is miraculously transformed. Indeed, he is soon dancing his way around Lisa’s bedroom and out the door. As he departs, we hear his joyful singing: ‘Oh, I want to be in that rumba when the saints go over there!’

It’s a touching scene – and one that demonstrates the enormously powerful effect music can have on our emotions. Psychologists have done a lot of research in this area and the evidence is clear: relaxing music calms us; happy music cheers us up.

What this means in practice is that you can increase your well-being by choosing the right kind of music. If that seems too good to be true, we urge you to put it to the test!

Try putting together a compilation CD for those times when you need a lift. (If you’ve ever fancied choosing your Desert Island discs, you should definitely enjoy this exercise.) In fact, you might want to have one selection to get you feeling up and bouncy, and another to help you chill out at the end of a tiring day.

When the mental health charity Mind carried out a survey, these were the top three songs for happiness:

• ‘Let Me Entertain You’ – Robbie Williams
• ‘Walking on Sunshine’ – Katrina and the Waves
• ‘Shiny Happy People’ – REM

And these were rated best for relaxation:

• ‘Thank You’ – Dido
• ‘Bridge Over Troubled Waters’ – Simon and Garfunkel
• ‘Porcelain’ – Moby

Of course, music isn’t the only type of sound that can increase our well-being. Relaxation CDs are enormously popular and tend to feature sounds from the natural world: for example, surf rolling onto a beach, the dawn chorus, a running stream, the gentle pattering of rain in a forest, whale song. You may find your public library has something suitable, or perhaps you can borrow a CD from a friend, and there are plenty now on YouTube. Give it a try and see whether it works for you too.

Remember also that making music is a terrific way of increasing well-being. If you used to play an instrument or sing, why not take it up again? A local band, choir or orchestra is sure to want you!

If you haven’t played or sung before, why not start now? You don’t need to be proficient to derive pleasure from music-making. Even the rawest novice will experience a huge amount of fun and a morale-boosting sense of achievement as they gradually improve. We speak from personal experience…

Remember the four components of happiness we discussed in Chapter 1? Making music is a perfect means to experience engagement or flow, and if you’re doing it with other people, a great way to build friendships.

If structured music-making isn’t your thing, there’s always the joy of singing for your own pleasure. So, whether you sing in the shower or along to favourite songs on the radio or CD player, open those lungs and let it out!

HUMOUR

‘Laughter, by definition, is healthy,’ wrote the South African novelist Doris Lessing. She was absolutely right. In fact, scientists have suggested that a sense of humour is one of the major influences on longevity.

But whether or not laughter helps us live longer isn’t our primary concern. What we’re after is a boost to our mood, an increase in positivity – and laughter definitely ticks that box. Think of your own experience – don’t you feel better after sharing a joke with friends or watching a funny movie?

So the objective of this particular exercise is simple: we want you to spend more time laughing, chuckling and giggling. If you can achieve that by hanging out with friends, so much the better. But don’t forget that you have at your disposal a huge range of funny films, books and TV and radio programmes – all of them carefully crafted to make you smile.

Doubtless you have your own favourites, but if you fancy something new ask your friends for suggestions.

I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose. WOODY ALLEN

SMILE, SMILE, SMILE!

The human brain is an extraordinarily complex organ. It’s far more powerful and sophisticated than any computer, for instance. And yet the brain can be fooled by something as simple as a smile.

Many experiments have demonstrated that we can produce an emotion in ourselves just by adopting the appropriate facial expression. Pretend to frown, for example, and your mood will dip. Feign a smile, on the other hand, and you’ll actually feel happier.

Try it out for a day. Every couple of hours, and whether you feel like it or not, spend a few minutes smiling. To help you, think of a happy memory, a time when you had the giggles, or a favourite joke. And yes, this might feel a bit weird to start with, but just try it and hang in there.

Aside from a positive effect on your own mood, one of the big changes you may notice is the behaviour of other people. We’re hard-wired from birth to respond positively to another person’s smile. Even as adults, we are drawn to the people who are fun to be around. If someone smiles when they see you, don’t you light up inside?

When you smile more often, you’ll find that your interactions with other people change accordingly. Because you project feelings of warmth, friendliness and approachability, you’ll be treated in kind. Which means that you won’t be the only person doing more smiling!

In the next chapter you’ll find more strategies to boost your positive thoughts and feelings. This time the focus is on relaxation, meditation and a new, but already hugely popular, psychological technique for increasing well-being: mindfulness. So read on and prepare to chill out!

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love. MARCUS AURELIUS (121–180 AD), ROMAN EMPEROR