Here’s a short story of how I moved from journaling to positive journaling (yes, these are two different types of journaling). It was one of several courses that are part of the Institute's ongoing programs under the umbrella of “Secular Ethics and Universal Values. The aim of this study was to examine how several psychological measures, related to psychological well-being, changed among participants in parallel with course attendance and meditation practices. My last tip to stick to journaling is something I discovered recently, yet I can’t believe how stupidly obvious it is.

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Sapienza University of Rome, and all participants gave written informed consent. Thus, future studies could take into account individual differences when evaluating happiness programs. The solid line represents retreat 1 and the dotted line denotes retreat 2 derived from the contrasts of the two-way ANOVA. In fact, by opening yourself to your needs, you also become more intuitive about being kind to others.We collected data at five-time points, always during the first day (either of the module or the retreat): at baseline (month 1 - T0), at pre (T1) and post (P1) of the mid-course retreat (month 5–Retreat 1), and at pre (T2) and post (R2) of the final retreat (month 9–Retreat 2), as shown in Figure 1. Open hearts build lives: positive emotions, induced through loving-kindness meditation, build consequential personal resources. It comprises 57 items rated on a four-point Likert scale, ranging from 0 (not at all) to 3 (very much indeed).

Nonetheless, scholars now argue that authentic subjective well-being goes beyond this limited view and support an interpretation of happiness as a eudemonic endeavor ( Ryff, 1989; Keyes, 2006; Seligman, 2011; Hone et al. Twenty-nine participants followed the entire program (there were nine dropouts after the first module). Finally, while well-being and happiness are individual and subjective narratives of one's life as good and happy ( Bauer et al. However, for our purposes in this piece, it’s enough to work off of a basic definition that melds the OED‘s definition with that of positive psychologists: happiness is a state characterized by contentment and general satisfaction with one’s current situation.This 30-day happiness journal provides a space where children can record things that make them happy, encouraging them to adopt a more positive outlook and find reassurance in the good and happy things in their lives. But bullet journaling might not be for everyone; think about your own needs and preferences before you decide if it's worth your time and effort. The methodology used approaches the intangible concept of happiness as resulting from different individual and social causes selected from dimensions addressed in the literature, and calculates their effects or importance through regression coefficients. As a first effect of the course, we expect that the retreats affect mostly psychological states (as measured in the comparison of psychological variables between start and end of each retreat), whereas the full course is predicted to affect mainly psychological traits (as measured in the comparison of the psychological variables between start, middle, and end of the entire 9-month period).

Within this view, individuals seem to focus more on optimal psychological functioning, living a deeply satisfying life and actualizing their own potential, personal growth, and a sense of autonomy ( Deci and Ryan, 2008; Ryff, 2013; Vazquez and Hervas, 2013; Ivtzan et al. In psychology, such a view finds one of its primary supports in Maslow's (1981) theory of human motivation.These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients identify sources of authentic happiness and strategies to boost wellbeing. For example, subjects with high trait anxiety have indeed anxiety as a habitual way of responding to stimuli and situations. When you start practising this simple art, you will realize that it doesn’t take something huge to be happy.