Exercises to Build Your Happiness Muscle
(Before reading, I recommend you know your superpower. If you don’t, take the free VIA Character Strength Test).
Take a minute to list your less-developed (weaker) strengths. We are going to work on boosting those babies with the following exercises while focusing on cultivating and growing more superpowers (strengths) by exploring three paths to happiness — Charmed Life, Zestful Life, and Remarkable Life.
THE CHARMED LIFE
This path is about emotions. It’s a way to get the kumbaya good feels about your past, present, and future. How awesome is that! For overachievers who work hard and don’t always stop and smell the roses, the following exercises can strengthen your ability to enjoy life and start blowing the fluff off dandelions again. Pick the activities that resonate with you — or embrace your overachiever mode and do them all. Remember, see the fun and be the ball.
Savor the Day
Set aside a half hour (or hey, why not an entire day?) for an activity that gives you joy. Something so engaging you won’t notice time flying and the sun setting.
I recently met a guy at the park who spends Saturdays walking around with his Nikon 35mm camera looking for photographic souvenirs. Along the way, he sometimes finds discarded trash that he treasures. He showed me the cracked figurine he found by the downtown river shoreline. When I told him it was a Hummel figurine called “The Wandering Boy,” he was thrilled. It was as if he had found the Holy Grail.
I agreed to follow him on Instagram, and even though his photos are cheezy pictures of squirrels or flying egrets, they always smile because I know he savors everything he does.
Three Things
Each night before bed, think about three good things that happened during the day. Then ask yourself what you did to make these things happen. This part is crucial to help you feel empowered and in charge of your life. (Why 3 things? Google it! You could spend a half hour and complete activity №1 by researching the magic behind the number 3.)
Unfinished Business: Take time to thank someone you’ve never adequately appreciated. Or, if you have unfinished business with someone, take time to settle the score. Shake your etch-a-sketch with a revitalizing dose of forgiveness, gratitude, or acceptance, and start drawing a new picture of the reality you want — not one you don’t want.
Let Grudges Go
I ain’t gonna lie; this one is hard. Once I realized that holding a grudge was causing me physical pain and messing with my gut, I decided it was time to let go and forgive.
Choose a person who has done something hurtful, maybe even unforgivable. Write that person’s name down on a piece of paper and a few choice words about the grudges they granted you. Things like betrayal, greedy bastard, insensitive asshole. Circle them. Then make 10 more circles on the page and fill each one with a phrase describing helpful and generous things that person did for which you are grateful.
When you are finished, hold the paper at arm’s length, squint your eyes, and dig deep within yourself to see the balance between the hurt they caused and how they helped you grow.
Opt-in Optimism
When something goes wrong, search for circumstances outside your control. Don’t focus on personal reasons for the failure and jump to conclusions about the setback. Say things like, “I’m a good planner, but that day didn’t go as I planned.”
When things do go your way, look for what character strengths attributed to the success. Embrace the sensory memory to anchor that feeling in your body so you can easily recall the good feelings in the future when you need a boost.
Rapid-Fire Relief
Find someone to play devil’s advocate with you and argue against your pessimistic thoughts. I once asked a friend what he did when the critical voice inside his head wouldn’t stop. He said, “I just scream, “SHUT THE F*CK UP! And it works.”
THE ZESTFUL LIFE
This pathway is about connecting with internal and external activities and will help identify your strengths. Learn how to use your strengths at work, in relationships, and at play to get more enthusiasm out of life.
Develop New Superpowers
Choose your top superpowers or ones you want to develop. Commit to devoting time each day to exercise this new strength muscle uniquely at work, home, or play.
Let’s say you want to work on temperance and the aspect of self-regulation. Maybe you feel you are missing out on learning about other people because you usually talk more than you listen. One of my favorite sayings is, “A wise man once said nothing.” For one day, make this your mantra. Be determined to ask more questions and learn new things about the people you thought you knew everything about. You may be surprised to learn your hairdresser flies a helicopter and your new neighbor is a bonafide dog training wizard.
Disaster to Audacity
Discover the thing you fear most and run toward, not away from it. If you’re like everyone else in this world with a fear of public speaking, just face it and commit to booking a speaking engagement.
Although fear of public speaking is more common than the fear of death, I don’t think anyone has ever experienced death by public speaking. I’m sure it’s possible, but I think the real fear is primal and goes back to our cave-dwelling days where if we stood up in front of the tribe, we would risk being pelted to death with elk bones. Nobody wanted to get kicked out of the tribe!
Center yourself using your core strength, think about the things you value the most, and find the resolve to push through. Then put all your focus on the love of learning and gratitude. Learn to use anxiety as a strength and make it work for you by embracing it as pure energy. This will give you enthusiasm and adrenaline, so your speech is delivered with vulnerability and emotion.
Or you can waste your day in a bar where they serve cold beer in little keepsake boots. The decision to move forward or stay stagnant is always yours.
Build Strong Bonds
To increase connection with others, plan activities that put into play one or more of the signature strengths of each person. For example: If one person has an appreciation of beauty and excellence as a signature strength, and the other has a love of learning, then they might plan a trip to the local volcano to learn about geology while admiring nature’s beautiful artwork.
Real Engagement
Practice responding constructively to others with unconditional positive regard to foster an interpersonal flow. I know it’s a mouthful, so I will put it in layman’s terms — approach things without judgment.
Take note of when your inner critic starts kicking the back of your seat and learn how to save criticisms for a later time when you can introduce them more constructively and helpfully. This, of course, will help you avoid conflict as well as being called Mr. Know-it-all (aka Bullwinkle J. Moose, who is pompously known for giving advice on every topic imaginable).
THE REMARKABLE LIFE
This pathway is about making meaning. It has become a spiritual cliche to aspire to be in the service of something greater than yourself. But c’mon, it’s way cool, Oprah does it, and we get massive purpose and meaning when we go to infinity and beyond our ‘self.’
Fun vs. Philanthropy
Do something today simply for personal enjoyment. Tomorrow, do something that brings joy to someone else. Think about whether one or the other makes you happier. Or do they both make you feel good in different ways?
Family Tree of Strengths
Get family members or colleagues to take a strength assessment test and report the results on a family tree or whiteboard. Think through the critical strengths of the group as a whole and systematically plan to relate to people differently in light of this new information.
The Gift of Time
Think of areas you would benefit from giving your time to a charity. How could you best use your strengths to be of positive service?
The Life Summary
Write your own eulogy. Document how you want people to remember you. Write letters (but don’t send) to your loved ones and share things that were most meaningful to you. Reveal your most valuable life lessons. This sounds kind of morbid, but it’s a very empowering exercise. It will make you relish each day on this earth more and more.
THE BEST LIFE
This pathway integrates the three previous pathways, and the exercises will help you develop the capacity to observe your different levels of happiness.
Write it Down
Throughout the day, answer the following questions: What did I do today that was meaningful? Was it enjoyable? Was I in flow? Did I do anything that gave me a reason to pause? As you review your day, come up with a hypothesis about what fosters happiness in the way that feels most important to you.
Daniel Pink, the author of Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, suggests getting an index card and, on one side, write, “What gets me out of bed” and on the other side, write “What keeps me up at night.” Answer the questions and put the card away for a month. Then check the card to see if your answers have changed. Keep at it until you are happy with your answers.
Plan for Happiness
Take what you’ve learned from the journal exercise and plan three activities: something you find pleasurable, something that grabs your attention and engages every cell of your body, and one that is meaningful and touches you emotionally. Notice which ones come easily and which ones don’t. Whether it’s buying yellow Livestrong wristbands on eBay, throwing a clay pot, or eating carrots like a bunny, make sure to do all three. Take time to notice what you’re already doing that’s pleasurable, engaging or meaningful but could be more enjoyable if you were more mindful of the experience.
The Hedonic Treadmill
When trying to make happiness your bitch, it’s important to recognize how the brain can sabotage our efforts. Just think of the many stories about lottery winners that ended in tragedy. Even though we want to believe it, we all know money doesn’t buy happiness. It buys sparkly things in store windows and a Delta flight anywhere, anytime, but it doesn’t always bring joy. Why? Because of something called the “hedonic treadmill.” The tendency to quickly rise to a new and stable level of happiness becomes a new normal. When you make more moolah, your expectations increase, resulting in no real happiness gain. Instead of never being satisfied, you can overcome this sardonic joke your brain plays on you by making small, positive behavior changes to slow down the tricky treadmill.
Good Luck, Bad Luck, Who Knows?
Make a list of bad shit that happened and good shit that came from it. As you go through your week, think of the Chinese proverb, “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”
The zen story goes like this…a farmer’s mare broke through a gate and ran away. When his neighbor heard what happened, he said, “What bad luck this is, you don’t have a horse to help on the farm.”
The farmer replied, “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?
Two days later, the horse returned with another horse. The neighbor said, “What fortune this is, you now have two horses.”
The farmer replied, “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”
Later that day, the farmer’s son was thrown from the horse and broke his leg. The neighbor said, “What horrible luck. Now your son can’t help you on the farm.”
The farmer replied, “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”
The next day the Emperor’s army rode into town looking for every strapping young man to join the fight, but the farmer’s son was left behind because of his broken leg. The neighbor came over and exclaimed, “How lucky, your son was not taken from you!”
The farmer said…yep….say it with me now, “Good luck, bad luck, who knows?”
The moral of the story is — We never really know if events are truly good or bad for us. It all depends on our mindset…our perspective.
(I hope you share your comments with me and let me know if you have tried any of these exercises or like my ideas. Muchas Gracias, mi amigo — thanking you in advance for the follows!)
