Which One Of These Will Boost Your Mood The Most?

Peter Naish, a researcher at Open University, wanted to find out what raises someone's mood. He measured different kinds of changes in his volunteers' moods: Changes in how relaxed they felt, how calm they felt, how alert and bright they felt, and so on. He even measured how valued they felt. And he added all these up to produce a "happiness score."

His volunteers tried a variety of common things people do to improve their mood. This is the list he used:

1. eat a chocolate snack
2. drink some alcohol
3. watch TV
4. look at personal photos
5. listen to music

Most people like all of these, and use them occasionally to boost their moods.

There was one item on the list that worked a lot better than any of the others. Can you guess which one it was? I would have guessed everyone is different, and for me it would probably be listening to music. But results of studies are often surprising and counterintuitive. Our intuition sometimes isn't very good.

The music and the chocolate didn't really change the subjects' moods very much. That was surprising. The alcohol and TV each gave people a 1% rise in their happiness score. But the clear winner was looking at personal photos. It gave people, on average, an 11% rise in their mood. It worked far better than anything else.

While turning on the TV or having a beer might be easier, there's a way to make looking at photos at least as easy: It's a free program called gPhotoShow. Go to their web site and download their program, which becomes one of the screensavers on your computer. You tell it what file to use and it will show the photos in that file as a slide show. I've been using it for years, and I love it. Google also has a free program that does essentially the same thing. Click on the smiling woman's photo above to find out about it.

How often do you sit down and go through photo albums? As much as I enjoy it, I never get around to it. But when my keyboard is idle, my screensaver starts showing photos and displays them randomly, so over a period of several months, I see almost all of them. It reminds me of good times I've had, and people I love.

Just last night, Klassy (my wife) and I were kicking back talking, and my screensaver came on. We ended up watching it for awhile and talking about the different pictures, and it really did lift our moods.

Not only does it lift your mood a lot more than watching TV, but if you're looking at the screensaver with someone else, you can talk and connect while you're watching the slide show (something you can't do as well while watching TV) and connecting with someone you love is probably the best mood-booster there is.

Read about another, similar thing you can do to raise your mood.

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Raise Your Mood With An Easy Question

I SOMETIMES get discouraged in this publishing business. Like any other business, it has its ups and downs, and sometimes my emotions go up and down with it. My wife, Klassy Evans, gave me a very simple suggestion awhile back that really helps. She said, "Whenever you feel discouraged, think of something you're grateful for."

I've done it many times now, and every time it is surprisingly easy to think of something I'm grateful for, and it makes me feel better every time.

I've read the studies on gratitude, but I've always thought of it as a project. It seems like work. I feel like I "should" sit down and write in a journal for a specified length of time, or try to write down a specified number of things I feel grateful for. That's how they do it in the experiments, but of course that's because it's an experiment. They have to test quantifiable, measurable tasks in an experiment. That doesn't mean I have to.

And as I found out, generating a little gratitude works well on the fly and in my head just as well as it does writing it down in a journal. It's not a chore at all — just a simple question to ask myself. It only takes a few moments (just long enough to think of something). And as soon as I think of something, I feel noticeably better.

I've found that if the first thing I think of doesn't raise my mood enough, I can easily ask myself what else I'm grateful for.

You and I naturally have our attention on our goals and what we'd like to attain in the future, and the mind naturally compares our goals to what we have now. It compares what we have with what we want to have. That's motivating sometimes, but it can also make you feel demoralized or frustrated.

It is equally legitimate — and ought to get equal billing — to think about what you have (compared to others or compared to your past), or what you have gained, or what you are just plain glad about.

Try it the next time you feel discouraged or frustrated. Ask yourself, "What one thing am I grateful for?" And see what happens. It's a simple, all-purpose moodraiser you can keep in your back pocket and use the hell out of.

When you do, you'll be happier.

Learn more about how comparisons alter how you feel: Change The Way You Feel By Changing One Simple Thing You Already Do In Your Mind.

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Altruism Truism

IN AN ARTICLE entitled If It Feels Good to Be Good, It Might Be Only Natural, the author says we've got it all wrong. Being kind or generous or altruistic isn't something painful or difficult or something that requires you to force yourself to be unselfish. We've gotten the wrong impression because our parents made us share our toys and religions tell us to love our enemies.

Being kind and generous and altruistic is natural and pleasurable, and the effort people have spent persuading us to be good to others has turned something enjoyable into a chore.

You don't have to be stuck with that point of view, however. What you can do instead is focus on the rewards, the pleasure, the happiness, and the good feelings that your acts of kindness can give you. In other words, you can look at opportunities to be generous or giving or altruistic as moments of happiness you could be enjoying. You can stop looking at them as something you "should" do.

People are basically good. I know there are sociopaths in the world, and they may not be good in any sense of the word. But normal, healthy people, however they may be behaving at the moment, have within them a built-in reward system that gives them pleasure when they perform acts of kindness, random or otherwise, for their fellow humans (or other animals).

How can this help you raise your mood? Simple. If you've been thinking you "should" be kind to others, and you make yourself do it (or feel guilty for not doing it) you can give all that up. Change the way you think about it. Remind yourself that kindness toward others is a source of happiness for you. You don't have to do it. You "shouldn't" do it. But if you want to feel good, you'll definitely want to do it.

This change in your perspective will make your acts of kindness more enjoyable for you, and encourage you to do more, which will make you feel good more often. And oddly enough, the recipient of your kindness will be happier too. Think about it. Would you rather someone did something for you because they enjoyed it or because they felt they should?

Change your perspective about helping others, and everyone wins.

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Do You Work With Someone You Don't Like?

When you have to work with someone or spend time with someone who makes you mad or irritates you, ponder this question: What could I like about this person? The question may seem repugnant at first, but it will help you counteract your brain’s natural negative bias.

Once you've decided you don't like someone, you automatically notice all the things about them you don't like, and you overlook things you do like about them. You're not doing this deliberately, of course, but it happens naturally and automatically.

If you think about something you like about the person, however, you don’t feel as much negative emotion when dealing with them, and you can deal with them more effectively.

I'm not talking about gritting your teeth and forcing yourself to be nice to someone. If you take a little time, you’ll find some things you genuinely like about the person. And when you genuinely like something about someone, you have a genuinely nicer feeling toward them. Ponder this question once in awhile. It will help you create and maintain that feeling.

One caveat here is: Some people are actually dangerous. One to four percent of the population are sociopaths who don’t care about you, who are incapable of normal human empathy, who will use and abuse you, and who cannot change. Do not try to find things you like about these people.

But chances are, the person who irritates you is not a sociopath and it would make a difference to ask yourself occasionally what you genuinely like about them.

Another good question along the same lines is: What does that person do (that I don’t like) that I have also done?

A third technique was expressed succinctly by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “If we could read the secret history of our enemies,” he wrote, “we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

I just finished reading the book, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and I found a good example of what Longfellow was talking about.

Before Lincoln ran for president, he was a small-time attorney. One day he was invited to participate in an important trial. He was to be co-counsel for the prosecution with a distinguished attorney named George Harding. Harding wanted Lincoln because the judge deciding the case knew Lincoln and liked him.

After Harding hired Lincoln, the case was moved to another city (with a different judge) so Harding hired a different co-counsel, Edwin Stanton. Lincoln didn’t know about the change, so he kept working on the case. But Harding and Stanton ignored and shunned Lincoln, at one point referring to him as a long-armed ape.

Stanton did not want Lincoln involved in the case, and Stanton made this painfully clear. Stanton avoided him at mealtimes, letting Lincoln eat alone even though the two attorneys ate and stayed at the same hotel. Stanton never asked Lincoln to even show him the considerable amount of work Lincoln had already done for the case.

As I was reading this, I thought Stanton was clearly a rude, mean person. Stanton insulted and humiliated Lincoln.

A little later in the book, I learned more about Stanton, and he had enough sorrow and suffering in his life to disarm all my hostility.

Earlier in his life, Stanton had been married and was deeply in love. He was happier than he’d ever been. They had two children together. Then one tragedy after another tore his world apart. First their daughter died of scarlet fever. While he was still reeling from that heartbreak, Stanton’s wife died of bilious fever.

Stanton almost went insane with grief. Stanton’s sister came to live with him, and she said he often wandered through the house at night sobbing, and screaming, “Where is Mary!?”

A little while later, a fever damaged the brain of Stanton’s younger brother. He was “unhinged” and purposefully cut his own neck with a sharp instrument and bled to death, spraying blood all over the room, even up to the ceiling.

His brother’s gruesome suicide was the last straw. Before these tragedies, Stanton was a cheerful man, full of goodwill toward others. From that point on, and for the rest of his life, Stanton was glum and grumpy. And sometimes rude.

I imagined losing my child, my wife, and my younger brother. Suddenly, I didn’t resent Stanton for his rudeness to Lincoln. I felt sorry for him and sympathized with the unendurable anguish he must have suffered. I believe that’s what Longfellow was talking about.

There is only one problem with Longfellow’s very sensible outlook — we don’t very often find out the secret history of our enemies. Maybe the point is to give people the benefit of the doubt. If someone treats you poorly, you can reasonably assume they have sorrow and suffering enough to disarm your hostility, and you’ll probably be right. And even if you’re not, you have saved yourself a little suffering. It is less painful to feel sympathy than to feel anger.

Summary:

When you are stuck working with someone you don't like, try one or more of these:

1. Ask yourself, "What could I like about this person?"

2. Ask yourself, "What do they do (that I don't like) that I have also done?"

3. Assume the person has had sorrow and suffering in their personal history, and act accordingly.

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