{"id":7455,"date":"2016-10-10T06:33:07","date_gmt":"2016-10-10T10:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/?p=7455"},"modified":"2018-12-29T09:24:48","modified_gmt":"2018-12-29T13:24:48","slug":"7455","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/7455\/7455\/","title":{"rendered":"Increase Your Happiness:  Look for the Positive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>This article is in our series about\u00a0<strong>increasing happiness<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>life satisfaction<\/strong>. \u00a0Many people with chronic pain can\u2019t\u00a0decrease their pain. \u00a0So another way to live a more enjoyable and fulfilling life \u2013\u00a0perhaps even more\u00a0important \u2013\u00a0is to\u00a0increase the positive. \u00a0That\u2019s what we\u2019ll be looking at in this series.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Let&#8217;s\u00a0look at\u00a0increasing positive emotions by <strong>looking for the positive in any <\/strong><strong>situation.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Our squirrely brains automatically look for problems and negatives.\u00a0 As with some situations &#8211; the negative is truly there.\u00a0 This isn&#8217;t about only the glass half full.\u00a0 But a <em>balanced<\/em> way of looking at most situations is finding\u00a0the <em>positive<\/em> along with the negative.<\/p>\n<p>So write down\u00a0a problem or tough situation you faced this week.\u00a0 Next, write down several things about this problem which were good.\u00a0 It may take you a little while if you need to look carefully for a benefit!\u00a0 The positive\u00a0could be:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a way you grew from this situation<\/li>\n<li>how it drew out a skill you need to practice<\/li>\n<li>how it made you work your problem-solving muscle<\/li>\n<li>you learned something valuable from the experience<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In looking for the positive in a challenge &#8211; searching for a balanced view &#8211;\u00a0you will be happier, more optimistic, more realistic, and more resilient.\u00a0 (Of course there may be some severe challenges or traumas that it&#8217;s hard to find any positives, especially immediately.\u00a0 But for most situations, you can find at least 1.)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Let&#8217;s take a look at 2 examples:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Small challenge&#8221; example<\/em>:\u00a0 We returned from a weekend away, and I had nothing in the frig for dinner.<\/p>\n<p>Benefits?<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>I got a yummy salad\u00a0take out lunch the next day, instead of bringing my lunch to work.<\/li>\n<li>I had some nuts and dried fruit for a small dinner, and remembered that I&#8217;ve been wanting to do a mini-fast (tiny\u00a0dinner) once a week anyway.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>So instead of feeling deprived and stressed about not having something to make, I worked around it, and remembered something I wanted to try.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Bigger challenge&#8221; example<\/em>:\u00a0\u00a0We had guests for a week, with lots of disruption and many more entertaining demands than I had anticipated.<\/p>\n<p>Benefits?<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Visiting with people we haven&#8217;t seen in a long, long time.<\/li>\n<li>I learned to rely on others more during this week.<\/li>\n<li>I learned the importance of listening to my limits in terms of energy and busyness.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I tried to focus in this situation on what was important &#8211; visiting with the guests, and let the annoyances go.\u00a0 It was also helpful practice for me of recognizing my limits &#8211; not going over them and being unhappy &#8211; and relying on others.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Your assignment:\u00a0 Do this exercise once a day &#8211; looking for positives in a negative situation<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is in our series about\u00a0increasing happiness\u00a0and\u00a0life satisfaction. \u00a0Many people with chronic pain can\u2019t\u00a0decrease their pain. \u00a0So another way to live a more enjoyable and fulfilling life \u2013\u00a0perhaps even more\u00a0important \u2013\u00a0is to\u00a0increase the positive. \u00a0That\u2019s what we\u2019ll be looking at in this series. Let&#8217;s\u00a0look at\u00a0increasing positive emotions by looking for the positive in any [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7455"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7455\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7982,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7455\/revisions\/7982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.howtocopewithpain.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}