Gift-giving gets expensive. And, let’s be honest, a lot of the time a gift sits unused or unappreciated. Here are five amazing gifts that don’t cost a thing.
- Give the gift of optimism. Optimists live longer and earn more. Plus, this is the gift that keeps on giving, since optimism is contagious. For thirty years, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have been studying how to teach optimism. The Optimistic Child by Martin Seligman and Karen Reivich teaches parents how to raise optimistic children, and a related book The Resilience Factor teaches people how to improve optimism in the workplace. One place to start: pay attention to how your kids or friends talk about bad events. When possible, don’t let them blame themselves or predict that things will never improve. Help them see where causes of bad things are outside of their control, and where it’s realistic that the situation will eventually improve
- Give the gift of gratitude. Saying “thanks” can seem easy, even bordering on meaningless. Of course, it’s nice to be on the receiving end, if the praise is authentic. We all like being appreciated. And research shows that people who express gratitude often are less-likely to experience depression and heart attacks. The best way to start is with a gratitude letter. Find someone you’ve never properly thanked before, and write her a detailed letter explaining what you’re grateful for. Be as specific as possible, and explain how you’ve been impacted. Then, if it all possible, read it to her in person.
- Give the gift of time. The research clearly shows that the highest levels of happiness are simply not possible without positive relationships with other people. And, the first step in building positive relationships is spending time with those you care about the most. So, close the laptop, shut off your Blackberry, and focus on your kids, your friends, and your significant other. Don’t just spend time with them; spend quality time with them where they recognize (and so do you!) that they are the most important thing to you at that moment. Then, watch your happiness and your relationships blossom!
- Give the gift of strengths. Help someone identify his strengths and show how he’s used them. Researchers put together a list of 24 signature strengths which we all have. Help a someone identify his top-5 strengths, then give him an example of how you’ve seen him use each one. Try it with your employees for a twist on the traditional yearly review. Take the VIA strengths test to get started.
- Give the gift of you. Relationships — both at work and at home — are full of ups and downs. Research from the University of Washington shows that divorce is predicted not by how couples argue, but how they celebrate. And a ratio of 4 or more positive statements to every 1 negative statements in meetings is predictive of corporate success. Celebration and positive statements need to be genuine, and realistic. A short-cut for learning how to give authentic praise is to learn to respond actively and constructively to positive news. For example, if your spouse gets a promotion at work, don’t say “that’s nice” or “wow, now you’ll be working even longer hours.” Respond with something specific like “Congratulations — that doesn’t surprise me at all. I saw you preparing for that last presentation and it looked great. And your enthusiasm for the new team is obvious. You’re getting the recognition you deserve.”
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
Hyatt hotels seems to think so. In a new program this summer, the worldwide hotel chain’s CEO empowered employees to bestow unexpected gifts and benefits on customers. The goal? The bottom line. “Gratitude is a powerful, and potentially quite profitable, emotion to inspire” according to the Rob Walker of the New York Times Magazine. While it’s questionable if these “acts of generosity” can really be called “random,” the impact should be the same: developing gratitude in customers. And according to a recent article in the Journal of Marketing (link is a PDF), gratitude can “increase purchase intentions, sales growth, and share of wallet.”
The New York Times Magazine column Consumed includes additional information and commentary.
What do you think?
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
This post comes from happier.com expert Todd Kashdan, Ph.D.
While on vacation, I had a pivotal moment with two cousins aged 7 and 11. In a rare moment of conversation (instead of riding ocean waves or playing football), I asked them what they think are the ideal qualities for being successful in life. Without taking a breath, my 7-year old cousin blurted, “Running fast; I can run faster than my mom”. You could see the pride in his facial expression, a little Tigger ready to race anyone, anytime. Now running fast probably lands no higher than 180 on the chart of successful traits but then again, this wasn’t a game of Family Feud and he took this in stride. Being precocious little creatures, they asked me what I meant by this thing called personality that I kept referring to. Little did they know that scientists continue to ask the same question…
If you’re anything like me, you listened to psychologists when they talked about a rigid, unchanging thing called personality. From early childhood to the grave, people remain essentially the same. How did they know? Historically, researchers gave people a slew of questionnaires asking them to rate how much they agree with statements such as “I’m an even-tempered person” and “I try to be courteous to everyone I meet.” A few months or even years later, people were given the same questions and guess what? Their answers were similar to what they said the last time. This oversimplified approach perpetuated the myth that our personality crystallizes into stone by the time we reach our twenties. This might be very satisfying if people describe you as being cheerful, playful, and charismatic. But if people describe you as neurotic, disagreeable, and closed-minded, this could be disheartening―forget self-help books and the gobbledygook of therapists because your personality is bred in the bone. Thankfully, recent research has overturned this oversimplified thinking.
Of course there is some continuity in how we think, feel and behave. Problems arise when we form an idea about who we are, say pessimistic, and then fixate on this idea, ignoring and discarding moments that fail to fit in. The problem is just as bad when we label our lovers, friends, and acquaintances. Nobody wants to be boxed in because you happened to witness them do something silly, annoying, or immoral. Do you want to label children as unintelligent because they fail a test or a single class? Do you want to label an adult as shy because they said little at a party where they barely knew anybody? Researchers have found that we define a stranger’s personality after a mere 10 seconds. With this thin slice of information, we start to think and act differently toward them. If we label them as open-minded and curious, we prefer to spend more time with them; if we label them as disagreeable and neurotic, we prefer to keep our distance. An entire pattern starts to form after a mere 10 seconds!
When we think of ourselves and other people in rigid, immutable terms (“I am not funny,” “She is cold and emotionless”) this paves the way for a self-fulfilling prophecy. But more importantly, it’s simply wrong. Rigid terms can’t do justice to describe a person. I like to think of personality as a series of buckets. Every time you think something, feel something, or do something, there is a moment to be placed in a bucket. Think of moments as something tangible, perhaps a golf ball. When we say someone is sociable, what we are saying is that they have a large number of golf balls in the bucket for being sociable (when they are talkative and comfortable around other people). But everyone (I mean everyone) has moments when they prefer to be by themselves or worry about being rejected or judged harshly by other people. When this happens, a golf ball goes into the solitude or socially anxious bucket. Sure, the majority of golf balls land in the sociable bucket, but don’t forget that in a given month or year, a sizeable number of golf balls are going to fill the solitude bucket and the socially anxious bucket.
What this means is that at any given moment, you “may be” or “could be” sociable, but you also might want to be alone or you might feel uncomfortable around other people. This idea of personality is far closer to the truth about who we are and what other people are about. It also opens up the possibility for all of us to be free, alive, and creative. When we recognize that everyone has a little bit of every personality trait, we become open to change and we become tolerant and accepting.
Try to avoid the trap of using rigid terms for yourself and others. We can laugh and tease friends at “happy hour,” and we can be solemn and assertive when trying to get an errant late fee waived by a stubborn credit card representative. When we recognize the breadth of our personality, we essentially gain access to a greater variety of strategies to get the possible outcome in a situation.
When we believe that traits such as intelligence, compassion, and perseverance are fixed, that there are only so many golf balls we can add to these buckets, we feel powerless to change. We start to view failures as personal flaws instead of stemming from difficult situations or a lack of effort. When we view our personality as a fluid quality that changes depending on what we do and the situation we find ourselves in, we become more energetic, productive, creative, and successful in life.
As a starting point to improving your quality of life: be aware that there is a bucket for every side of every single personality trait that you can conceive and there are at least a few golf balls in each. Each and every bucket is a part of your personality and with certain intentional strategies, we can being adding more golf balls into buckets that reflect characteristics that you admire, strengths that work well for you, or behaviors that energize you.
It’s fun to contemplate the master list of personality traits that enable people to be particularly happy and successful. This includes assessing how many of these traits are in our personal arsenal. However, this exercise is one step removed from reality. Our lives are full of possibility when we are aware of the multiple sides of our personality and that we are still evolving. This flexible mindset sets the stage for a life well-lived.
Interested in specific strategies for how to add more golf balls to particular buckets? Do you want to build strengths and become more psychologically flexible? Discover dozens of exercises based on cutting-edge research in my latest book, Curious?
Dr. Todd B. Kashdan is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at George Mason University. He is the author of Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life. For more about his book and research, go to www.toddkashdan.com.
Follow him on Twitter: www.twitter.com/toddkashdan
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
When I first moved to the the DC area in the mid-1990’s, it took me a couple of months to find a job. One summer day, I got a call saying that I had been offered a training specialist position. I was overjoyed. This was a completely new career for me and I looked upon it as a major achievement after countless interviews and applications.
About three months after starting the job, however, I was laid off as the business was downsizing. I was devastated and had trouble thinking straight for a couple of days. How was I going to find something, again, with so little experience? How was I going to pay the bills? These and many more questions kept running through my mind. I did find another job, of course, but it was a very difficult time.
Looking back on my reaction, I probably would have been better served by focusing on action. That is, my goal was to find another job, so my energy would have been more productively spent updating my resume, building contacts, applying for jobs, etc. By keeping it in perspective and focusing on solutions I am also convinced I would have felt much better.
And, the research shows that some people will actually grow from this type of experience and be stronger as a result. In fact, I would venture to say that if we all looked back on many of our own adversities, we would recognize that as one door closed, eventually, another one opened.
In my own case, I was able to land a position with an up-and-coming wireless telecom company that ended up being a spring board for my entire career. In fact, I probably would not have been looking for this particular job had I not been laid off. As I look at the other adversities that I have faced in sports, business, and my personal life, I realize that I actually did benefit from each bad event. I learned specific lessons that will help me for the rest of my life.
And, while this knowledge does not prevent future adversities from happening, I know that I am stronger and more resilient as a result. I know that (as my Winston Churchil and my Dad) have said, “This, too, shall pass.”
So, the next time an adversity hits, do your best to keep it in perspective and recognize that there may actually be an opportunity for growth waiting for you at the other end.
In the meantime, learn from your past adversities through our What Door Opened? exercise or take a minute to read some great stories of resilience in our Community section.
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
Just over two years ago, I decided to buy a new car. And, as excited as I was at the thought of getting something new, I was just as intimidated by the process. No, I wasn’t worried about haggling with a car salesman or filling out the paperwork – I was scared that I would not get the best possible price. With the resources at my finger tips (eg; the internet), I was worried that this would take a great deal of effort and that there was a lot of room for error.
So, I decided to limit my choices and make a quick, informed decision. First, I went to one web site and got the ‘dealer price’ for my desired car and the potential price of my trade-in. Next, I identified four car dealerships within a 30-minute drive and called each of them and asked them for a quote on the model that I wanted. (Only one dealership declined to give me a quote over the phone.)
I got a good deal from a dealership about 30 minutes from my house. The sales rep was friendly but the paperwork was a little burdensome (of course). And, in the end, I felt that I had received a “good deal.” I was very satisfied with the entire process. To this day, I have no regrets about my decision.
In The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwarz, the research shows that people who ’satisfy’ as opposed to ‘maximize’ when making decisions are actually happier with their decisions and happier, overall. Satisficers simply settle for something that is good enough or something that meets their own standards. Maximizers (people who go to just about any length to get the best combination of features, benefits, and price) do a better job in objective terms than those who satisfy. For instance, they usually get better prices because they do more research on what is available. Maximizers, however, are actually less satisfied with their purchases because they always believe they could have done just a little more research.
Schwarz does a masterful job bringing to light the number of decisions that we have to make on a daily basis. Everything from cookies to cars has expanded in the last several decades to a dizzying array. The consequence is that we’re being ‘pushed’ to be maximizers. The author argues that the amount of choices we have requires us to put more effort into our decisions, that we are more likely to make errors, and that the psychological consequences are more severe.
Here are some tips to be more satisfied with your decisions while limiting your choices:
- Set clear goals (eg; I want a new car for less than $25,000)
- Set reasonable expectations for your purchase. Avoid thinking that this purchase/decision will finally make you happy and that these feelings of joy will not dissipate.
- Limit the number of choices for a given decision.
- Express gratitude on a regular basis
- Stop comparing yourself to those who have more than you. Upward comparisons can produce jealousy, hostility, frustration, and other negative emotions.
So, while we all crave the freedom to make our own choices, we are actually better off with just a little less choice.
happier.com is a personal trainer for your happiness. With more than a dozen tools and tests to help you measure, track and improve your happiness, you can trust the happier.com experts to help you reach your goals. Exclusive videos and a popular blog mean there’s something new to learn every day. Download the free iPhone application or find what you’re looking for with the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. happier.com is on Facebook, LinkedIn, and twitter and has meetup groups in Washington, Philadelphia, and Portland, with more planned. Click here for a social media press release from our launch.
