While researching resilience for You Are Awesome I found that in order to become more resilient, you need to cultivate a positive mindset first. Why? Because the stronger we are mentally, the better we are able to bend — not break — when challenges come.
A positive mindset is Optimism Insurance. It helps soften every blow you get from a nasty email, friend letting you down, or bad news story flying across the headlines.
So how do we develop a happier mindset?
Let me answer in three steps:
Step 1: Flip your happiness model
Our parents lied! They said they wanted us to be happy but then also encouraged us to go to a good school, find a good job, and work hard for a promotion. Sure, everyone’s parents are different but I would argue that most of us hear some version of this model told to us as children:
GREAT WORK → BIG SUCCESS → BE HAPPY
You know, study really hard, get good grades, go be a doctor! (Are my Indian roots showing?) Or simply work really hard, get a promotion, then be happy!
The first step to cultivating a positive mindset is flipping this model.
Based on research I share below, how does developing a happier mindset really work?
BE HAPPY → GREAT WORK → BIG SUCCESS
Yes, it’s the opposite! A phenomenal paper called The Benefits of Frequent Positive Affect: Does Happiness Lead To Success? shows that if you’re happy first… then you do great work, because you’re happier doing it! You’re 31% more productive, have 37% higher sales, and are three times more creative, amongst a host of other benefits.
So Step 1 is realizing that cultivating a positive mindset needs to happen first … and not as the result of work or success.
Step 2: Commit to a “20 for 20” happiness challenge
So we know we have to be happy first. But… how? Does anyone just wake up in a good mood every day? I don’t! Most people don’t. We have to work at it. It’s like yoga. A practice. The goal isn’t to be perfect … the goal is to be better than before.
Luckily there are dozens of positive psychology studies that give specific, tactical practices that we can use to cultivate this mindset.
I often challenge people to commit to a “20 for 20” challenge which means you take one of these practices below and commit to doing it for 20 minutes a day for 20 days in a row. By then you have created a new happiness practice that will be harder to stop.
What are some of the practices? I’ve listed five of my favorites below together with one study on each. Remember: These all take 20 minutes or less a day. And it’s a multiple choice question. You don’t have to do them all! Just pick one.
Journaling about the highlights of your day
In a University of Texas study called “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Words,” researchers Richard Slatcher and James Pennebaker had one member of a couple write about their relationship for twenty minutes three times a day. Compared to the test group, the couple was more likely to engage in intimate dialogue afterward, and the relationship was more likely to last. What should you write down? Simply a laundry list of the highlights of your day. If you aren’t the pen and paper type then try the free email journaling service Ahhlife.com.
Take a nature walk (or another exercise you like)
The American Psychosomatic Society published a study showing how Michael Babyak and a team of researchers found three thirty-minute brisk walks or jogs can improve recovery from clinical depression. Yes, clinical depression. Results were stronger than those from studies using medication or studies using exercise and medication combined. Can you commit to going for a jog 20 days in a row or going for a walk in the woods? If you can get into nature the phytoncides released from trees can reduce adrenaline and cortisol (a stress hormone) in your body. (More on this from the paper “Effect of forest bathing trips on human immune function”)
Reading 20 pages of fiction
A 2011 study published in the Annual Review of Psychology showed that reading triggers our mirror neurons and opens up the parts of our brain responsible for developing empathy, compassion and understanding. What does EQ help with? Becoming a better leader, teacher, parent and sibling. (Sidenote: This big a-ha on reading is one of the reasons I launched my podcast 3 Books … where I interview folks like David Sedaris, Judy Blume, and Malcolm Gladwell about which 3 books changed their life. Trying to help find that always elusive next great book to read.)
Playing “Rose Rose Thorn Bud” around the dinner table
My family and I play a game called Rose Rose Thorn Bud almost every night. Essentially, we take turns sharing two roses (what we’re grateful for), a thorn (what didn’t go well that day), and a bud (something we’re looking forward to). I wrote a longer article on Rose Rose Thorn Bud here and made a video on it here, too.
Singing
A study published in Evolution & Human Behavior found that choral singing calms the heart, boosts endorphin levels, improves lung function, expands pain thresholds, and decreases reliance on pain medication. Choral singing was even found to elicit feelings of inclusion, connectivity and positivity, and fosters social closeness in a group. Can you join a church choir or develop a sing-a-long playlist to jam with your kids during school dropoff or pickup?
Step 3: Swap negative inputs for positive inputs
Our brains crave bad news.
We have 200,000 years of evolution programmed into our brains that have perfected the art of looking for problems, finding problems, and solving problems. It’s why we rubberneck on the highway, it’s why if it bleeds it leads, it’s why, in the words of author and media critic Ryan Holiday, “MSNBC’s real goal is to glue you to a television screen and sell you Subarus.” We get addicted to that hit as our amygdala constantly scans the world for problems. No wonder sometimes that’s all we see!
So what’s Step 3 to developing a happier mindset?
Swap negative inputs for positive inputs. Cancel your newspaper subscriptions, unfollow all news sites on social media, swipe left on your iPhone and scroll down to disable the News Widget that automatically pops up. (Here’s a WikiHow article on disabling iPhone News with more detail.). What’s the goal? Swap superficial knowledge of “many bad things every single day” for deeper knowledge on the things that matter to you most. How? Through reading books. And, signing up for emails that actually serve and honor your attention instead of mining it for ads. (Here are 10 I personally read and recommend.)
Don’t worry. After you ditch the news you’ll still know what’s going on. It’s impossible to avoid all the TV screens blaring in the corner of every elevator, dentist office, or airport lounge. You may know less about what’s going on but you’ll be consciously trading that in for deeper knowledge, greater wisdom, and, yes, a happier mindset.
What are the three steps to developing a happier mindset?
Step 1: Flip your happiness model
Step 2: Commit to a “20 for 20” happiness challenge
Step 3: Swap negative inputs for positive inputs
Do you think you can do it?
I know you can do it.
Start right now.
And good luck!
Neil Pasricha is a leadership and happiness expert, a highly sought-after business speaker and author of five New York Times and #1 international bestsellers. They include: The Book of Awesome, based on his 50-million hit, award-winning blog, The Happiness Equation, an accessible research-based guide to developing happiness, and most recently the international bestseller, You Are Awesome. He is also the host of the top-100 iTunes podcast 3 Books with Neil Pasricha.
