Positive Emotions Boosters or Happiness Boosters
Positive Emotions Boosters is a quick, simple, and powerful reflective exercise to help participants identify activities that spark positive feelings in their daily lives. It is great for those who would like to have more positive emotions, but also more wellbeing, or energy.
This flexible tool works in personal development workshops, team-building sessions, and wellbeing programs - it’s great for groups to exchange ideas, but also in 1:1 coaching.
by Mirna Smidt from Trainers Toolbox Goal
To help participants identify and plan activities that increase positive emotions in their lives.
Materials
Instructions
Step 1: Choose one positive emotion you'd like to boost (e.g., joy, calm, gratitude, curiosity). Tip: You can also choose to work with positive emotions in general, but choosing one specific one usually gives more specific ideas for the list so it makes it more tangible.
Tip: When explaining the exercise, mention that when we are in a positive emotion, we tend to think more creatively, broadly and have many more ideas.
When we are in a negative emotional state, it is more challenging to think of a novel ideas. That is why sometimes when we are in a negative state, it is hard to even imagine what would make us feel better now. Having a list prepared in advance, apart from enriching our life with positive emotions in general, can also make it easier for to get out of a negative emotional state as we have the list of possible ideas of what would “pick us up” ready.
Step 2: Brainstorm a personal list of activities or experiences that boost this emotion for you.
Step 3: Schedule some of these activities in your calendar over the coming days or weeks.
Step 4 (optional): Exchange ideas with others, and based on what they share, add some more activities to your list.
Step 5 (optional): Make your list visually appealing and place it somewhere visible as a daily reminder (e.g., decorate it, use post-its, create a vision board).
Tip: You can repeat this activity for multiple emotions or create a general list of happiness boosters.
Tip: You can share the attached sheet with them for inspiration.
Tips for running this activity online
- Use a shared document (Google Docs, Miro, Jamboard) for participants to build their lists.
- Encourage participants to share one or two of their boosters in breakout rooms or chat (optional).
- Suggest creating a digital wallpaper or screensaver or postit with their happiness boosters as a visual reminder, or suggest adding some of the activities from the list into their schedule for the upcoming week.
Attachments
- Happiness boosters - english.pdf
Background
Inspired by Positive Psychology practices, developed at Happiness Academy, sister project of Trainers Toolbox.
Author
Trainers Toolbox is a place for trainers and coaches interested in creative, innovative methods that can bring a new twist, energy and deeper level of learning to their training. We provide workshop & courses for trainers, facilitators and coaches, build science based learning materials & share great new tools on Trainers Toolbox blog.
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