I’m Unhappy – What Can I Do to Feel Better Right Now?
Dr. Acacia Parks is an instructor in positive psychology, a researcher and a member of the Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. Dr. Parks has taught a variety of classes on how to use positive psychology interventions, and she often gets questions from students and clients about what will work best for them.
Question: I’m unhappy. My Authentic Happiness Index results show I’m on the lower-end of the range, and I don’t feel cheery or upbeat. What should I focus on with happier.com?
Answer: You’ll likely benefit the most from exercises that focus on positive emotions. From my experience teaching and the research data, we get an idea of what works for what type of person.
The Three Good Things exercise, for example, will help you to focus on the positive aspects of your day, which research tells us often fall through the cracks of memory. It sometimes takes a week or two to see the benefits, but people who use Three Good Things on a regular basis report sustained decreases in depressive symptoms and increases in positive emotion.
Two exercises on HDC reliably produce large and immediate increases in positive emotion: Have a Good Day, which helps you plan a day full of pleasant activities, and the Gratitude Letter, in which you write a letter expressing in detail your gratitude for someone else’s contribution to your life.
We know from research by Barbara Fredrickson and colleagues that positive emotion leads to creativity and flexible thinking – as someone who experiences low levels of positive emotion, these exercises can give you the boost that you need.
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.
Everything must not necessarily be for money.. This site should have been FREE, and not paypal. Think again. Not everyone can affort, more so who are not so happy in life because of money constraints.. Think again…
Hi Folks,
I am enjoying and learning a lot from your site. I wish that this site was free because I lost my job almost 2 years ago and I am struggling to make ends meet.
I also have Bi-Polar 2 and GAD as well as Chronic Depression all of which I have been dealing with for over 30 years. I do not want to share the reasons for the labels that the doctors have put on me because I think that this is not the appropriate place to do so.
I am currently on a Disability Plan which only gives me $700.00 to live on each month. I am working toward employment once again, but in the mean time I wish that you would allow me to be a full subscriber at no cost because I need all the positive help that I can get at this time in my life.I totally understand if you cannot do this because I realize that you have an overhead and other bills to pay.
Perhaps you could add a donation link or button to your site with the Soulintention to allow people in my position to become members. I know that when I get back on my feet, I am willing to give you a donation to help others to get the valuable information that you are suppylying and that means so much to a person like myself during a rough bump on the road.
Thanks for Your Good Work,
John Brennan
I agree with the other posters here – the people who could benefit the most from this website most likely cannot due to their financial situation at the moment. I too think that making this a donation site instead of a paid site would we very helpful. As someone once said ‘you need to be wealthy in order to be healthy’.
Hi Donna,
Thanks for you comments. It seems that I am not alone at this time. And, it’s true, that when we are down and need help the most, finances become a problem. Perhaps you and some of the other members of this site can propose a solution as, like I said, hosting a site does cost time and money and I don’t feel that the owners of the site should go without as they have put a lot of effort into a very good thing.
Let’s just see what ideas other members or visitors can come up with,
Many Thanks,
Aatma
Positive psychology, as academic fields go, is a young one. With only about 10 years as a recognized academic field, there is still so much to study and so many questions to answer. Now, most investigators focus on measuring happiness and studying the things that enable flourishing. The discoveries of positive psychology are, by definition, public and accessible to everyone. The field is built on the scientific method ‹ results need to be generalizable, replicable, answerable using accepted methods of inquiry.
And because of that, there is almost completely transparency in what has been learned. You can read about it in books, study it in universities, or hear about it in speeches from academics.
But knowing what works is only part of the effort. For us to truly inspire people to be happier and more resilient, we need to help them put into action what’s been proven in the lab. Some people do this by writing books that describe what to do in your own life. At happier.com, we go beyond the books by building interactive online tools and exercises to help people not just learn about being happier but to “do happier” through use of our site.
Of course, since we build the best tools and work with the best efforts, there’s a significant cost to our approach. And our users are clearly excited at the opportunity, and willing to pay for a personal trainer for their happiness.
For those who want to learn elsewhere, we suggest they review some of the great books or even some of the free videos featured on happier.com.
Best,
-HDC
I found the first couple of responses to this good article a bit disturbing!
Society seem to view help for depressed people as something that MUST be provided free. Because of this, most of the help offered to us depressed people is useless, sometimes worse than useless. But you see, we’re depressed – society owes us…
It took me 15 years to discover I was depressed and the one lesson this taught me was to seek out the best help. I didn’t say the most expensive help, I said the BEST help. I regard myself a bit of an expert on finding ways to help me cope, and as you may have guessed, Happier.com is one of them.
Choosing the best help available means being able to pay for it. I am on a small 3rd world budget so there will be sacrifices, but somehow those sacrifices are part of my healing (and in the case of Happier.com the price was a lot more than that small subscription fee, it included a 3G modem and an expensive data contract). You know, I feel good about spending that, it shows that I want to move forward.
I was going to blog my experience in a few months, when I knew the full benefits but when I saw those responses, I was concerned that people who would benefit from Happier.com may be turned away. This site seems to be working well for someone as mixed-up as me, why not take a 1 month’s subscription then ask your friends if they notice a difference. I am sure the techniques will work even better for a normal person.
If it doesn’t work, you’ve spent the price of a single “take-out meal“, hardly a sacrifice!
And if it does work…
I’d think that if those in-charge of this website, which is a wealth of health in itself, were to approach some good people or those in the medicine world, the industrialists, may find some of them ready to finance, as this world is not yet empty of good people ready to help! Thanks.