Let’s play a game of associations: close your eyes and write down five words that instinctively come in mind when you hear the word…: “Holidays”. If you’re like me, your ideal thought of the Holiday season involves sitting on a snowy day next to the fireplace wearing a sweater while reading a book. Chances are you used words with a strong positive association like, friends, happiness, snowman, family, gifts…. And, if you are like me, then you keep wondering why your Holiday season never turns out that way.

Every year I experience a moment (usually around December 10th) when I realize that it got to me again: Usually it’s when I walk around with dilated pupils and a racing heart, while mailing cards, buying gifts, and making dinner plans. Holiday stress is almost inevitable, but there are ways to make it better.

Here are a few ideas:

1. Express Gratitude:

Expressing gratitude is probably the most time-efficient thing one can do to regain a sober perspective and be reminded of the goodness in life. Write 2-3 things you are grateful for in a gratitude journal at least every other day. Carry your journal with you if you can, or better yet use happier.com’s iPhone app!

1. Schedule me-time in your calendar:

Schedule a few hours a week where you have absolutely no commitments. During this time do not answer the phone, look at email or do any chores. Try to spend this time by yourself, exercising, reading, or journaling.

3. Give others non-tangible gifts that only you can give:

Think about friends and family members who may long for something only you have: a good word, a smile, a special skill. Sometimes a small gesture goes a long way. Fix your brother’s car, or write a small poem to your sweetheart. Give a gift that money can’t buy.

4. Put a stress emergency kit in your pocket

Carry in your pocket a de-stressing activity that you can do on the go. Use a small pocket book for journaling, or your cell phone’s camera for taking pictures of happy moments you encounter. If you carry a smart mobile device, get one of the many emerging mobile software applications that can help you stay centered and in tune with yourself even in the most hectic scenarios.

5. Get enough sleep

It’s stating the obvious but can’t be repeated too many times. Sleep deprivation is the mother of everything stress and a recipe for disaster. Be aware of that critical time at night when you want to just write a few more cards or drop dead in front of the TV, and just make the decision to turn in.

This post was authored by Ran Zilca.  Ran is the CEO of Signal Patterns, developers of assessment and positive psychology applications. Ran’s background covers a wide range of R&D leadership roles including analytics, biometrics, and software development at the IBM research division and the Israeli Defense Forces.  You can follow Ran on twitter.

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.

Five tips from happier.com for staying happy and finding success in your job search:

• Want to get a better job, faster? Research shows that for people who are unemployed, the optimists get hired faster, and get better jobs.  Even among those people who are laid off within 6 months of getting a job, optimists find another job twice as fast.

• Being unemployed is tough — and not just financially.  The mental strain is significant, and it’s easy to feel trapped in a downward spiral of self-defeat and depression.      You can protect yourself against the risk of feeling increased mental strain.

• Learn about your strengths.  These aren’t the tasks you are good at doing.  Instead, strengths are broader traits of your character like fairness, or humility or creativity, ingenuity and originality..  Know your top strengths and be able to talk about them.  Find a story to identify how you have used each one in the workplace.      Having the vocabulary to describe your strengths can help you make the case to enter a new field of work, with prior experience in another field.

• Identify the good things in life, every day.  Searching for work can feel overwhelming and take up time and money.  Regardless of what else is going on, take a moment before bed each night to recognize three things that are going well.  And think specifically about why they’re going well.  Write it down if you want.  Research shows that focusing on why things are going well in your own life will help strengthen you mentally and increase your happiness.

• When the thinking gets tough, get happy.  We’re wired for narrow-mindedness.  When our ancestors got scared, they focused all of their resources on surviving.  When they felt  secure, they would explore more and think about the broader world.  Even today, research shows that when we are unhappy or full of negative emotion, we narrow our thinking and tend to focus in on only one solution.  When we experience positive emotion, we think more creatively and can better identify alternative solutions.  This is especially relevant to job seekers, where a large study showed that job seekers identified more re-employment opportunities when they were happy, compared to being sad.  When you need that boost of creativity, take a moment to listen to a favorite song, go for a walk, spend time with your family, or do something else that makes you feel good.

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.

Angie LeVan is a resilience coach, positive psychology consultant and an associate of Positive Psychology Services, LLC. Angie has studied the science of well-being in the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at University of Pennsylvania, and she is a blogger on the topic of resilience for psychologytoday.com. See her profile in our practitioner directory.

Stress has a bad, bad rap – fair criticism or the product of paranoia? Or perhaps both? While chronic stress can definitely wreak havoc on our minds and bodies, research shows that some stress is actually healthy. Unfortunately, these days, we do everything we can to either avoid it or mute it – from spa treatments to stress management programs to a frosty cold beer. While I certainly agree that managing stress is a smart and useful tactic, I also believe that by going to great to great lengths to avoid it, we’re actually doing ourselves a great disservice. We may be stunting our opportunities for growth. Even when we’re faced with ‘bad’ stress, we have healthy, protective mechanisms for coping with it. In fact, we have the ability to thrive despite and even because of challenge.

In the world of academics, thriving is “characterized by the individual displaying less reactivity when faced with stressors, and resulting in a faster recovery or consistently higher level of functioning”.  To the rest of us, thriving is Sweaty Magic – the ability to spin hardship, whether unexpected adversity or self-imposed challenge, into positive growth! But how does one do that, you ask? Interestingly enough, there are many research-supported tricks of the trade for thriving. Above all, Thrivers are masters of challenge and change and grow through challenge and hardship. They know how to lean into stress, how to approach it, relying on their self-resources! Here are a few of the tricks Thrivers use to turn adversity, hardship and challenge into gold-medal value!

1.    Thrivers use Positive Illusions
Findings in social cognition research indicate that there are three different types of positive illusions people use towards growth: 1) self-enhancement; 2) unrealistic optimism; and 3) an exaggerated perception of personal control. Researcher Shelly Taylor and colleagues “suggest that the ability to maintain positive illusions provides the individual with reserve resources” for managing everyday stressors as well as in helping people cope with extremely stressful circumstances. According to these psychologists, positive illusions act as buffers and may even help people find meaning, which may later lead to positive growth.
2.    Thrivers use Positive Reinterpretation – they look for something good in what has or is happening. For example, when Dan lost his job this past May, he decided to look at it as an opportunity to reassess his career path as well as his life values. In doing so, Dan found a new job he truly enjoys, and he now has more time to spend with his family.
3.    Thrivers have a sense of Self-Efficacy (the psychological phenomenon – “I think I can”)  – they believe they are capable of handling stressful situations, whether positive or negative, and they also believe that they can succeed in many different areas of life. Hence, the old adage “If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t, you’re right” holds more than a grain of truth, especially when it comes to thriving.

Not only are these tricks vital for growing through hardship, they’re also crucial to achieving your best life through overcoming obstacles in achieving goals and cultivating positive change.

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.

Angie LeVan is a resilience coach, positive psychology consultant and an associate of Positive Psychology Services, LLC. Angie has studied the science of well-being in the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program at University of Pennsylvania, and she is a blogger on the topic of resilience for psychologytoday.com. See her profile in our practitioner directory.

Despite the great case for getting off our duffs, there are some amazingly cool and effective practices we can do from the comfort of our own recliners – without even budging a finger. For instance, you could practice your golf swing, work out your muscles, prepare to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, hone your chess skills, practice for tomorrow’s surgery, and you can even prepare for your best life!

Mental practice can get you closer to where you want to be in life, and it can prepare you for success! For instance, Natan Sharansky, a computer specialist who spent 9 years in prison in the USSR after being accused of spying for US has a lot of experience with mental practices. While in solitary confinement, he played himself in mental chess, saying: “I might as well use the opportunity to become the world champion!” Remarkably, in 1996, Sharansky beat world champion chess player Garry Kasparov!

A study looking at brain patterns in weightlifters found that the patterns activated when a weightlifter lifted hundreds of pounds were similarly activated when they only imagined lifting.  In some cases, research has revealed that mental practices are almost effective as true physical practice, and that doing both is more effective than either alone. For instance, in his study on everyday people, Guang Yue, an exercise psychologist from Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, compared “people who went to the gym with people who carried out virtual workouts in their heads”. He found that a 30% muscle increase in the group who went to the gym. However, the group of participants who conducted mental exercises of the weight training increased muscle strength by almost half as much (13.5%). This average remained for 3 months following the mental training.

Noted as one form of mental rehearsal, visualization has been popular since the Soviets started using it back in the 1970s to compete in sports. Now, many athletes employ this technique, including Tiger Woods who has been using it since his pre-teen years. Seasoned athletes use vivid, highly detailed internal images and run-throughs of the entire performance, engaging all their senses in their mental rehearsal, and they combine their knowledge of the sports venue with mental rehearsal. World Champion Golfer, Jack Nicklaus has said: “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp in-focus picture of it in my head”. Even heavyweight champion, Muhammad Ali, used different mental practices to enhance his performance in the ring such as: “affirmation; visualization; mental rehearsal; self-confirmation; and perhaps the most powerful epigram of personal worth ever uttered: “I am the greatest””.

Brain studies now reveal that thoughts produce the same mental instructions as actions. Mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory. So the brain is getting trained for actual performance during visualization. It’s been found that mental practices can enhance motivation, increase confidence and self-efficacy, improve motor performance, prime your brain for success, and increase states of flow – all relevant to achieving your best life!

For someone like Matthew Nagle who is paralyzed in all four limbs, mental practices have transformed his entire way of life. Matthew had a silicone chip implanted in brain. Astonishingly, after just 4 days of mental practice, he could: move a computer cursor on a screen, open email, play a computer game, and control robotic arm. While our circumstances may be less stringent than Matthew’s, it’s quite obvious that every person can benefit from mental practices.

So, if athletes and chess players use this technique to enhance performance, how can it enhance the lives of the ‘average joe’? First, study results highlight the strength of the mind-body connection, or in other words the link between thoughts and behaviors – a very important connection for achieving your best life. While your future may not include achieving a great physique or becoming the heavy-weight champ or winning the Masters Tournament, mental practice has a lot to offer you. Try it here!

Begin by establishing a highly specific goal. Imagine the future; you have already achieved your goal. Hold a metal ‘picture’ of it as if it were occurring to you right at that moment. Imagine the scene in as much detail as possible. Engage as many of the five senses as you can in your visualization. Who are you with? Which emotions are you feeling right now? What are you wearing? Is there a smell in the air? What do you hear? What is your environment? Sit with a straight spine when you do this. Practice at night or in the morning (just before/after sleep). Eliminate any doubts, if they come to you. Repeat this practice often. Combine with meditation or an affirmation (e.g. “I am courageous; I am strong”, or to borrow from Ali, “I am the greatest!”).

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.

Emiliya Zhivotovskaya is a member of the happier.com Positive Psychology Practitioner Directory. “Using a scientifically based and integrative approach (positive psychology, neurology, yoga and alternative therapies) to enable the Mind, Body, Spirit and Will to flourish.”

It’s the day before Thanksgiving, I get on the phone with my weekly client. She’s feeling guilty that she’s not feeling grateful. She met a woman the night prior whose son was handicapped and was able to walk a little bit. Her outpouring of gratitude, made my client feel worse about her depleted attitude of gratitude. She said she couldn’t even think of what she was grateful for.

When I encouraged her to make her list, she immediately asked if she could make her “not grateful for” list. I said, “Of course.” Positive psychology is not about solely focusing on positive emotions and denying the negative. Here is the exercise that I did with my client that enabled us to work through the negative events she was facing and honor the positive.

-   We made two lists: 1) Things she is grateful for in her life and 2) Things she is NOT grateful for in her life.
-   She tallied both lists. She had 12 things we was grateful for and 13 things she was not grateful for.

Keeping Dr. Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden and Build Theory in mind, I knew that my client needed to be above a ratio of 3 positive to every 1 negative emotion in order to flourish or feel better about her life. This required increasing her gratitude list.

-   I asked her to go back to the list of things she was grateful for and find 24 more things. I explained that anything could be a source of gratitude; it was just a matter of shifting perspectives. At first it was difficult for her, but quickly gratitude for the garbage man, memories of Lake George and knowing that her dog has a good new home, made it to the list.
-   Then we addressed the “NOT grateful for list.” One by one we looked at the things that essentially were not working in her life and reframed them as things that she was wanting. So she was, “not grateful for her friends all starting to move out of the neighborhood.” This discontent alludes to her “wanting strong connections to friends who live nearby.” Her feeling not grateful for her son treating her rudely indicates her strong desire to have a respectful and communicative relationship with her children.
-   I asked her to read back to me her 36 Gratitudes and 13 Wants list.

In my practice, measuring the effectiveness of my work with clients is important. Prior to the start of this exercise I asked her to rate her positive mood on a scale of 1-10 (1 being dismal and 10 being highly positive). She rated herself at a 3 or 4. At the end of this exercise, she gave herself a 5.

Again, I was not trying to create a positive-disillusion in a situation. I was honoring where my client was and using basic tenets of positive psychology to find the area of her life where did have control over, and work there.

After this exercise, she remembered there was a writing class going on in a week that she wanted to register for. Without my prompting, she committed to registering for it as soon as we got off the phone. She was far from being in “peppy land”. However, she had stepped out of her negative rut and seemed to have a handle on some of the negative circumstances of her life.

Negative emotions are beautiful because they alert us to what we are wanting. Reframing “not grateful for lists” in the form of wants enables us creatively problem solve what to do about them. Use this exercise to take control of your reality and your thanks this thanksgiving.

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.

NOVEMBER 24, 2009Robert Hood, MSNBC

Some people are turning the economic recession into an opportunity for personal growth and financial reward. NBC’s Robert Hood reports.

This Thursday, we have a chance to express our gratitude – and, we get to do with loved ones. So, if you’re reading this blog, you also have a chance to teach people about the science behind gratitude and its effect on happiness. Here are a couple of ideas to consider.

• Keep a gratitude journal: It is widely accepted that writing down Three Good Things and their causes every day leads to higher levels of happiness and less symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression. But, what if you kept a family journal? Try going around the table this Thanksgiving and ask each person to tell what he/she is grateful for and jot it down in a journal. Keep the journal available for everyone and bring it out every Thanksgiving. You may also want to start this tradition every day at the dinner table…
• Teach the gift of gratitude: Pick a family member or friend that will be joining you for Thanksgiving and tell him or her about the things for which you are grateful. Then, tell him or her about the Three Good Things exercise. Teaching is a powerful tool and a wonderful gift.
• Read a gratitude letter: …to your entire family! If you have ever done this exercise where you read a letter to someone that you have not properly thanked, you know the power of gratitude in relationships. Now, try reading the letter to everyone who will be attending dinner. Tell them how you are thankful for something they did for you or something that you witnessed.
• Recall the bad: Everyone experiences adversity – some of us more than others. Dr. Robert Emmons (author of  Thanks! How the new science of gratitude can make you happier) writes that it is helpful to remember the ‘bad times.’ The first benefit is that this helps us recognize the ‘good’ in our current lives. The second benefit is that we can begin to practice counterfactual thinking – “mental comparisons we make between the way things are and how things might have been.” Counterfactual thinking can help us recognize just how much worse life could have been. Make it part of the conversation.

So, don’t be afraid to put off your Christmas shopping or watching the “The Year without a Santa Claus” for just a couple more days. Make gratitude a habit and don’t be afraid to share it with your loved ones.

Dr. Acacia Parks-Sheiner 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.

The happiness-health relationship isn’t magic – although some parts of it may be biological, a big part of why happy people are healthier stems from behaviors that come more easily to happy people. A study by Bob Emmons and colleagues found that people who experience gratitude on a regular basis are more likely to spontaneously exercise, and they also get better sleep. These short-term health behaviors lead to long-term benefits like longer life span. So if getting happier doesn’t seem worth the effort by itself, think abut the health benefits!

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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.

A quick look at the shelves in any major bookstore will convince you that positive psychologists have no trouble getting the word out about their exciting new science. Each year literally dozens of titles are published on happiness, meaning and living a better life. Because it is rooted in empirical study Positive Psychology has given the self-help market a much needed scientific makeover. One conspicuous hole in all this new information, however, is a more engaging way of presenting material. Reading books- even best sellers—is inherently a passive activity.

With this in mind a group of top names in Positive Psychology created a series of workbooks designed to allow readers to engage more fully with the material. These workbooks, including titles such as Invitation to Positive Psychology, Positive Motivation and Positively Happy, are written by recognized authorities on the topic. Each workbook, weighing in at more than 100 pages long, is full of reflective exercises and suggested activities that allow readers to go “beyond the books” and actually use this dynamic material in their own lives. Readers gain not only background information on the science but also practical tips, opportunities to step back and take stock of their goals and experiments they can try in an effort to craft a better life.

Learn more about these workbooks.

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.

1. What gave me joy today?
2. Do I really need to take offense?
3. Is there someone I should forgive?
4. What are my strong points?
5. How can I sustain happiness?

These five questions are explored in the September issue of Essence magazine, with guidance provided by happier.com.

Members of the media interested in using happier.com experts or contents in their articles can contact us directly.

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.