POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY EXERCISES

1. A Letter of Self-compassion
Have you ever heard of self-compassion? Simply put, self-compassion means that you treat
yourself with care and concern when confronted with your own mistakes, failures, and
shortcomings. It has 3 different components:
 Self-kindness: “… that we are gentle and understanding with ourselves rather than
harshly critical and judgmental.”
 A sense of common humanity: “… feeling connected with others in the experience of
life rather than feeling isolated and alienated by our suffering.”
 Mindfulness: “… that we hold our experience in balanced awareness, rather than
ignoring our pain or exaggerating it.”
 

This specific exercise is called “A letter of self-compassion” and you’re going to start with
choosing an aspect of yourself that you dislike and criticize. It may be an appearance, career,
relationships, health, etc.
1. Write in detail about how this perceived inadequacy makes you feel. What thoughts,
images, emotions, or stories come up when you think about it?
2. Next, imagine someone who is unconditionally loving, accepting, and supportive.
This friend sees your strengths and opportunities for growth, including the negative
aspects about you. The friend accepts and forgives, embracing you kindly just as you are.
3. Now write a letter to yourself from the perspective of this kind friend. What does he
or she say to you? How does this friend encourage and support you in taking steps to
change? Let the words flow and don’t stress about structure or phrasing.
 

After fully drafting the letter, put it aside for fifteen minutes. Then return to the letter and
reread it. Let the words sink in. Feel the encouragement, support, compassion, and
acceptance.

Review the letter whenever you are feeling down about this aspect and remember that
accepting yourself is the first step to change.

2. Taking a Daily Vacation

Now before you grab your pen and paper, let’s go on a daily holiday, shall we? Are you
living life in the fast lane? Do you feel like you lack time to actively savor and appreciate the
experiences in your life? Then this exercise is for you.
Research has shown that, rather than their intensity, the frequency of positive emotions and
feelings is a stronger predictor of our overall level of happiness. Meaning that it’s more
effective to increase the number of positive experiences than it is to intensify them.
This exercise does just that. It’s called “Taking a Daily Vacation”:
1.  You’re going to choose a different vacation every day. For example, going for a
walk, chatting with a friend, having a hot bath, watching the sunrise while sipping on a
mug tea. The only limit is your imagination. Just choose something you enjoy doing.
2.  Before you actually start, remember, your daily vacation is a time to relax. So set
aside your worries and fears for a while.
3. During the daily vacation, try to be present and experience what is happening. Notice
the sensations. How are you feeling? What positive emotions are you experiencing? Take
a mental note of them.
4. After your daily vacation remember to plan ahead for the next day; what will
tomorrow’s daily vacation be? Feel free to look forward to it.
 

Every day, before you go to bed, take at least five minutes to remember the positive
emotions that you savoured during the day, and on the weekend take 10 to 15 minutes to look
at all the positive emotions of the past 7 days. How did you feel this week compared to other
weeks? Are there any differences? How do you feel right now?
 

3. The Best Possible Self

The Best Possible Self (BPS) exercise can be used to increase optimism. The BPS requires
people to envision themselves in an imaginary future in which everything has turned out in
the most optimal way.

Over the past years, writing about and imagining a BPS has repeatedly been demonstrated to
increase people’s mood and well-being (King, 2001; Peters et al., 2010; Sheldon &
Lyubomirsky, 2006).

Peters et al. (2010) provided evidence that writing about and imagining a BPS can also
increase optimism in terms of expecting favourable outcomes. This effect was independent of
the effect on mood that was simultaneously increased by the manipulation.

Goal
The BPS exercise can be used to increase optimism in terms of expecting favourable
outcomes (see for instance Meevissen et al., 2011).

Advice
While in most cases the exercise is used in a written form, it is also possible to ask clients to
make drawings of their best possible self. The most powerful way to use the exercise is by
instructing clients to visualize their best possible self on a daily basis.
Tool Description
1. Set a timer or stopwatch for 10 minutes, during this time you are to think about your
best possible future self and to write it down on paper.
2. Imagine your life the way you always imagined it would be like, your best possible
self. Picture that you have performed to the best of your abilities and you had achieved
the things you wanted to in life.
3. While writing, don’t worry about grammar or punctuation just focus on writing all
your thoughts and emotions in an expressive way. You may want to have several sheets
of paper for this exercise.
4. Reflection: after completing the initial exercise, you must reflect on your feelings and
answer. Think about the following questions: What effects did this exercise have?
 Does this exercise affect you more emotionally or does it affect your current self-
image?
 Did it motivate or inspire you?
 Did it make you want to make changes?
 How did this exercise affect you overall?

5. The Strengths Wheel

After a client is aware of his strengths and the way they are manifested in his or her life, the
next step is to explore ways to optimize strength use. In order to optimize strength use, it is
important to become aware of the potential for growth in a given context.

For some strengths, there may be sufficient room and opportunities for using them more
frequently and/or more intensely. For other strengths, certain limitations may prevent the
strengths from being used more. The present exercise can be a valuable tool for gaining
access to this information.

Author
The current exercise was developed by Matt Driver. 

Goal
The goal of this exercise is to create a graphical representation of the possibility for existing
strengths to be used more or less. The advantage of using this approach is that a client can
immediately see what strengths are used too little, or too much.

In addition, this exercise offers a nice starting point for creating future plans to increase or
optimize strengths use.
Advice
Obviously, asking clients to indicate the extent to which they currently use a strength and the
room they believe that exists for using the strength more is a very subjective estimation.
Rather than providing an objective indication, the goal of this is an exercise is to create a
global insight into the strengths that can be expanded in a given context (e.g. work or private
life).

For clients, it is nice to receive a copy of this exercise. For instance, they can use it to discuss
and explore possibilities with other people that may be involved in the context at hand (e.g.
their employer).

Instructions
After identifying the strengths of your client, it can be helpful to investigate if there is room
to use the strengths more often.

The Strengths Circle can be used to make a graphical representation of the extent to which
strengths are used (current use) and the room that exists to use the strengths more (scope).

The center of the circle represents a score of ‘0’ and the outer rim a score of ‘10’.

Ask the client to place two marks in each segment of the circle indicating:

1. To what extent they currently use that strength in the chosen context (e.g. work); and
2. How much scope there is for using that strength more in that context.
3. Next, draw a triangle that connects the two marks.
 

The bigger the gap between the current use and the scope, the bigger the triangle should be
and the more potential there is for using that strength more.

Example
Below, you will find an example of a completed graph. In this graph, it becomes immediately
obvious that the chosen context (work) is far from ideal for expressing and building the
strengths of social intelligence and leadership.

 
 

This is indicated by the small arrows close to the core of the circle. These arrows indicate that
the current strength is not used much and that there is not much potential for growth.

Often, when this pattern applies to three or more strengths, it is very likely that the current
context of the client is far from ideal. For instance, from experience, I know that these
patterns are often visible for clients who don’t like their jobs. It can be both an eye-opening
and confronting experience for clients to plot their strengths in this way.
EXERCISES TO BOOST HAPPINESS
New research on positive psychology exercises has found a number of ways to give your
happiness a boost and lessen your depression. If you are trying to manage your stress better,
lift some of the holiday blues, or simply become a bit happier, pick one of these 7 exercises
and try it for a 1 week.

 One door closes, another door opens: Consider a moment in your life when a
negative event led to positive consequences that you were not expecting. Write about
this each day.

 Gift of time: Offer the “gift” of your time to three different people this week. This
might be in the form of time spent, helping someone around their house, or sharing a
meal with someone who is lonely. These “gifts” should be in addition to your planned
activities.

 Counting kindness: Keep a log of all the kind acts that you do in a particular day. Jot
them down by the end of each day.

 Three funny things: Write down the three funniest things that you experienced or
participated in each day; also write about why the funny thing happened (e.g., was it
something you created, something you observed, something spontaneous?)

 Gratitude letter/visit: Write a letter of gratitude to someone who has had a positive
impact on you. If feasible, you might consider delivering the letter to the person. [It is
important to first weigh the pros and cons of delivering such a letter.]

 Three good things: Jot down three things that went well for you each day and give an
explanation as to why these good things occurred.

 Use your signature strengths in a new way: This is the most popular of all positive
psychology exercises. Take the VIA survey hat asks you about your character
strengths. Choose one of your highest strengths (your signature strengths) and use it in
a new way each day.

Caveats

 If you don’t like the idea of writing these exercises out, consider having a planned
discussion each day for a week about the exercise with someone in your life.

 Make sure you practice the exercise for a full week. Take notice of the impact it has.

References: Gander, F., Proyer, R. T., Ruch, W., & Wyss, T. (2012). Strength Based positive
interventions: Further evidence for their potential in enhancing well-being. Journal of
Happiness Studies.