Write your happy thoughts down…

A study in the British Journal of Health Psychology claimed there was a significant reduction in stress and anxiety when people wrote about their positive emotions.

Previous studies have shown that writing about negative emotions is also good for your mental well being getting stuff “off your chest”.  However not much has been written about the positive emotions.

Writing about positive experiences for 20 minutes a day for 3 consecutive days improved people’s mood and led to fewer visits to the Doctor.  Even writing as little as 2 minutes a day was a positive experience and reduced stress levels.

For the study the 20 minutes of  writing covered areas where people had been moved by a good book, painting, a piece of music or just a good interaction.

There were 71 healthy participants, aged 19 to 77 and randomly allocated into two groups.  The first group was asked to write about the most wonderful experiences (as described above) of their life for 20 minutes for 3 consecutive days.  The other group just covered neutral topics, such as their plans for the rest of the day etc..

At the end of the study the groups answered questionnaires to measure their levels of anxiety and the group that had documented the positive emotions were in much better place than the neutral group.

Write your happy thoughts down to reduce your anxiety levels, get into a routine of reviewing the day ensuring you highlight the positive.

Please do get in touch for a workshop on positivity bev@nuggetsoflearning.co.uk