5 Questions Guaranteed to Boost Your Happiness
Use these two-minute inquires to promote positive thinking every day
Recently, it seems like all the conversations I have with my friends follow a particular, disheartening type of formula:
Person 1: How’s your day going?
Person 2: Terrible. Have you read the news today? I heard (insert a piece of depressing information, macabre headline or apocalyptic-sounding rumor here)
Person 1: Sigh. I know. Things are really bad. Really, really bad.
Persons 1&2: Long stares into the distance.
Don’t get me wrong, these conversations are important. It’s valuable to stay well-informed and discuss current events. However, the compounding reality of dealing with a global pandemic, economic uncertainty and social unrest makes it difficult to remember the importance of focusing on the positive in our day-to-day lives.
Questions to boost your happiness
The proliferation of adverse events in today’s world has real consequences on the average person’s brain chemistry. When surrounded by difficult realities, humans tend to focus on possible dangers and detriments. It’s an evolutionary technique that’s responsible for our survival as a species. But focusing on these thought patterns for too long can cause undue stress and depression.
It’s important to find ways to refocus your brain patterns for positive thinking. When you find yourself feeling negative, use the five questions below to refocus your brain in patterns of happiness. Each inquiry is designed to activate neural activity on the right side of the prefrontal cortex of your brain, where positive thoughts occur.
1. What do I like about myself?
Consider this question as part of your morning routine. While you’re brushing your teeth, look in the bathroom mirror and challenge yourself to come up with three things you really like about yourself. They can relate to physical characteristics or other personality traits.
When you engage in this exercise, you’re training the neurons in the ‘positive thoughts’ section of your prefrontal cortex to fire. Activating these neural patterns in the morning will help you stay positive throughout the day. Debbie Hampton, writing for the Huffington Post, notes that:
As a thought travels through your brain, neurons fire together in distinctive ways based on the specific information being handled, and those patterns of neural activity actually change your neural structure.
2. What’s the best thing happening in my life at this very moment?
Think of this question whenever someone inquires with the ubiquitous ‘how are you’? Instead of replying with a mindless ‘I’m fine,’ take a few seconds to take advantage of this routine interaction to promote positive thinking. Think of something genuinely exciting or interesting happening in your life and discuss that topic.
According to Psychology Today:
This type of exchange will produce serotonin, which creates a sense of well-being and supports brain growth, especially in your prefrontal cortex (PFC), which serves as the integration center of all of your brain-mind functions.
3. What could be good about this situation?
When you’re faced with a stressful or potentially negative situation or piece of news, it’s important to take a minute to consider the possible positive outcomes. For example, if you read an article about the difficulties facing school openings in the United States in September, your first reaction might be to think, ‘Oh, this will be a disaster.’
But take a minute and challenge yourself to think of a few ways the situation might work out in a more positive fashion. Maybe there will be an important debate around the school openings. Maybe local governments will make decisions that the majority of constituents agree with. Maybe the local governments won’t make those decisions, but voter turnout for school board elections will sky-rocket.
Even if the positive scenarios you imagine seem unlikely, the most important part of the exercise is to not let yourself default to a negative bias.
Writing for Psychology Today, Dr. Erin Olvio refers to this technique as ‘challenging your negative thinking’. She notes that remaining optimistic in the face of negative situations has the potential to improve problem-solving ability as well as mood.
4. What act of kindness can I perform right now?
Next time you feel stressed or anxious, take a minute to look around and ask yourself how you could improve someone else’s day. Maybe you could offer a compliment to a friend, or take a few seconds to dig out some spare change for someone begging on the street.
These actions allow you to kill two birds with one stone. First, you will improve someone else’s day. Second, you’ll end up feeling better about yourself as well as your surroundings.
In a study published in the June 2017 edition of the journal Emotion, researchers found that random workplace acts of kindness improved the happiness of both the givers and the receivers over the course of two months. The study made two important conclusions about acts of kindness:
- Acts of kindness are emotionally reinforcing for both the giver and the receiver
- Acts of kindness are contagious (that is, they inspire the receiver to perform further acts of kindness or ‘pass it on’).
Extra bonus:
There is also evidence that acts of kindness release oxytocin in the human brain, a hormone normally equated with feelings of love and compassion.
5. What can I do to feel 5% happier right now?
Next time you start to spiral into a bout of negativity, stop and force yourself to make a list of activities that could boost your happiness by a slim margin. Maybe you’ll force yourself to smile, confront a problem that is bothering you, text a friend or go for a walk.
Whichever activity you choose, this increase in happiness will likely yield large results. According to The How of Happiness by researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky, about forty percent of our happiness is under our own control. So, if you can tap into the activities that you believe may boost your daily happiness by a small amount, you may find they leave you in a much better mental state than you anticipated.
I would love to hear about your experiences with these questions! Please leave a comment below.
If you would like to keep in touch and receive monthly updates about my writing, please sign up for my newsletter here. Just for joining, I’ll send a list of five books I read in the last twelve months that changed my life. I look forward to hearing from you.
You may also enjoy reading: