Happiness

Most of us would like to be happy, or happier.

An interesting experiment reported by the Guardian conducted by psychologist Richard Wiseman (University of Hertfordshire) showed that people asked to practise 1 of 4 techniques:

• expressing gratitude
• smiling
• recalling a pleasant event from the day before and
• carrying out an act of kindness

reported feeling happier, with those asked to think about one positive thing that happened the day before reporting the greatest increase in happiness (15% compared with the control group).

The video above is on the memories technique. For more videos on the technique and more info generally, see the related Science of Happiness site. No doubt Prof Wiseman will be feeling very happy if lots of people buy his book 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot as a result of all the publicity! Or, we could all just focus on happy memories…