Two Science-Based Strategies for Boosting your Wellbeing

Jane shared this with our newsletter subscribers in late 2021.

I have been delighted to have been invited as a guest on various podcasts, radio shows and Zoom events over the last few months. One question that has come up several times has been, ‘What practical take-away can you share that can help boost well-being?’, so I thought this would be a good thing to share with our newsletter readers, too.

As a Positive Psychologist, I look for evidence-based interventions, and these are what I am going to recommend to you, dear reader. Using our character strengths, and practising gratitude are the two most effective Positive Psychology Interventions for increasing wellbeing, and – as new school and college terms are imminent - they are a great tool to use with the children in our care, too, to help them develop their own toolkit for happiness. I’ll talk a little bit more about each of these.

Character Strengths

Firstly, character strengths. These are positive personality qualities that reflect our core identity, create positive outcomes for ourselves and others, and contribute to the greater good.

The great thing about character strengths is that they allow us to identify and then use what we are GOOD AT and ENJOY! Character strengths are a great way of helping us redefine our purpose and meaning when we get a bit lost. Instead of doing what we have always done, we can look at what we are good at and brings us joy, and purposefully bring more of that into our lives.

There are several online character strengths surveys that are available. The one I tend to point people to is The VIA Character Organisation. This is a psychometrically validated personality test that measures your character strengths. When you discover your greatest strengths, you can use them to face life’s challenges, work toward goals, and feel more fulfilled both personally and professionally. In turn, researchers and professionals can access years’ worth of survey results data to advance the science and practice of strengths.

One way to keep the list of our character strengths to hand (if you will excuse the pun!) is to draw around our hand and write our top five character strengths on it, one per digit. This is great for children to do too. Take a photo and save it as a ‘favourite’ on your phone, and put the picture on your fridge, where you will see it regularly, to remind you of your strengths.

Knowing what your top five character strengths are is half the story; the other half is recognising and using them. For example, if you have a character strength that is Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence, you could change your screensaver to a beautiful photo you have taken, or put some art prints on your wall. The natural world can be a great inspiration, too, such as making time to watch the sun rise, or set.

What does this look like for you, to build your character strengths into your day?

Gratitude

The second thing we can do to boost our wellbeing is to practise gratitude. Gratitude is the affirmation and recognition of benefits we receive.

It benefits us in many ways as it boosts our psychological, physical, relational and spiritual wellbeing. Gratitude is also key in developing and affirming relationships and promoting reciprocal positive behaviour; this creates an ‘upward spiral’ of positive relationships. Gratitude helps us to notice and celebrate the positive aspects of our friendships, and this helps us to create a pattern of positive and supportive behaviour.

Gratitude is something we can practise, but also something we can witness or receive. Random Acts of Kindness, where we perform acts of kindness for strangers, without recognition or reward are an example of gratitude in action. Of course, we can also be kind to people we know, as outlined above, as this benefits us and our friends. “Three Good Things diaries” or “Joy Journals” help us to focus, record and re-read things we are grateful for. This also helps redress the negativity bias we have, by directing our focus to positives, and also helps us to re-wire our brains to notice the positives. Sending thank you cards is another way to show and share gratitude. Building these things in to our daily or weekly routines will also help us to embed them into our behaviour. For example, I know I Head Teacher who sends three ‘thank you’ cards to her colleagues each Friday, at the end of the school week. This is also a really lovely way to end the working week on a positive note.

These are all examples of giving and receiving gratitude. How can you build giving and receiving gratitude into your day?

Would you like us to run a workshop or team event to explore these ideas? Get in touch.