Discover how small changes can lead to major life satisfaction.
Practising being a little more curious, thankful, optimistic, enthusiastic and humorous makes people happier, research finds.
People who worked on strengthening positive attributes like these felt more satisfied with their lives, psychologists have discovered.
Training simply involved practicing the strength.
For example, some people practicing their gratitude wrote to thank another who had been important in their lives.
Others learned to appreciate beauty more by paying full attention in moments that were beautiful.
People training their curiosity tried an activity or interest that was new to them.
Those looking to improve their enthusiasm incorporated new physical activities into their lives, such as sports, social events or extra challenging work.
Professor Willibald Ruch, who led the study, said:
“Anyone who trained one or more strengths reported an increase in their sense of wellbeing.
This manifested itself in the fact that these participants were more cheerful or more often in a good mood, for instance.”
For the study, 178 people either worked on their strengths or were assigned to a control group who did nothing.
Of the people who worked on their strengths, some worked on those more strongly linked to life satisfaction.
The study’s authors explain:
“…strengths […] that typically correlate highly with life satisfaction (curiosity, gratitude, hope, humor, and zest) was compared in its gain in life satisfaction with a group that trained strengths that usually demonstrate low correlations with life satisfaction (appreciation of beauty and excellence, creativity, kindness, love of learning, and perspective)
and a wait-list control group.”
Both groups who worked on strengths felt happier, the results showed.
Working on curiosity, gratitude, hope, humour, and zest, though, worked best.
Related
The study was published in the Journal of Happiness Studies (Proyer et al., 2015).
