There are 1000s of self-help books available on the market, 26,089 results for Self-Help : Happiness on Amazon.com alone. No matter how much you enjoy reading (and if you do some of the best titles are listed in my Books Club page), you are never going to get through all of them.
What people really want and need is tips that they can implement quickly and easily to improve their wellbeing. The primary goal of this blog is to distill down all the various tips and tricks that I have accumulated from my academic and recreational reading and experience.
Are there any scientifically proven techniques that help improve a peron’s life in less than 1 minute?
Dr Richard Wiseman set out to answer this question and after surveying thousands of studies he identified the following 10 techniques that behavioural researchers have identfied. Many of them overlap with a lot of my own readings.
Develop a gratitude attitude
This is a well established technique that many of the most successful persons in the world have identified, and there are the studies to back it up.
I keep a gratitude diary and write in it every night. It has been proven that listing three things that you are grateful for in life, or three events that have gone really well over the past week, can significantly increase your level of happiness for nearly one month. I write three things every day, and also write something I am looking forward to the next day.
This practice has been proven to make you more optimistic about the future and increase your physical health.
Put a picture of a baby in your wallet
Having a picture of a happy baby in your wallet increases the chances of your wallet being returned if you lose it by 30%.
The baby’s smiling face initiates a deep-seated evolutionary mechansim that leads to people to become more, and thus the likelihood of someone returning your wallet.
Hang a mirror in your kitchen
Looking at yourself in the eye makes you more aware of your body. This results in a 32% reduction in the chances of your making poor unhealthy food choices.
Buy a pot plant for the office
Having a plant in your office help decrease stress levels, induce good moods and thus promotes creativity. This results in a 15% increase inthe number of creative ideas contributed by males, and helps females come up with more original solutions to problems.
Touch people lightly on the upper arm
Gently touching someone’s upper arm subconsciously makes someone trust you and makes them more likely to agree to your requests. The touch subtly conveys high status. Research on dating found that the touch lead to a 20% increase in the number of other accepting the offer of a dance in a nightclub and a 10% better success rate when asking for a phone number to a stranger on the street.
Write about your relationship
Couples who each spent a few minutes each week writing their deepest thoughts about their relationship increased the chance of them staying together by 20%. ‘Expressive writing’ caused couples to use more positive language when they communicated with each other, leading to a healthier, happier relationship.
Detect liars by closing your eyes and asking for an email
When persons lie they give off strong clues like they lack detail to their stories, use more ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’, and use second and third person narrative (they don’t sau ‘me’, ‘mine’ or ‘I’).
Also, persons tend to lue 20% less in email than they do on the phone because there is physical evidence of their words and they may be referred to latter to prove their lying.
Praise kids for effort over ability
Dr Carol Dweck wrote a brilliant books called ‘Mindset‘ about this subject based on her research. Commending kid for their hard work (‘well done, you must have made a good effort’) rather than their abilities (‘you are so smart/talented’) encourages them to give their best regardless of the consequences, helping avoid any fear of failure. This increases the chances that they will willingly challenge themselves, enjoy challenges, be self-driven learner and achieve more in the long run.
Visualise yourself doing, not achieving
Persons who imagine themselves working through a process required to achieve a goal were more likely to be successful than those who just imagined having their dreams come true. Especially effective is imagining watching yourself. Those who did this was 1/5 more successful than those who saw themselves doing the task from their perspective.
Consider what others will say about your when you are gone
Imaging what a close friend would say about you at your funeral and considering what your legacy will be, both personally and professionally, helps you identify long-term goals, and take stock of how far down the path of achieving those goals you currently are.
If you want to know more about the above points and many other tricks and techniques you can use to achieve happiness and success, check out Richard Wiseman‘s book, ‘59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute‘.
Enjoy!
Scott