strategies for creating good mood

1. Strategies for creating good
mood

2. Fordyce’s Happiness Training Program
• devised a package designed to teach the “fourteen fundamentals of happiness”
(1981)
1. Change your activities - be more active, be productive at meaningful work, get
organized;
2. Change your thinking - think optimistically, orient yourself to the present, lower
your expectations and aspirations, value happiness-put it first in your life;
3. Nurture relationships - develop and nurture close relationships because they are
the primary source of happiness, develop an outgoing and social personality, spend
more time socializing);

3. 4. Value personal growth - work on a healthy personality, be yourself;
5. Decrease negative emotions (that is, eliminate negative feelings, stop worrying).
• Smith,Compton, and West (1996) found that happiness scores could be increased
further when people practiced a simple meditation technique in addition to
implementing Fordyce’s program for happiness.

4. Comments on Fordyce’s Program
• two of Fordyce’s fundamentals deserve special attention
“lower expectations and aspirations.”
• William James insightfully said one way to raise self-esteem was to lower our
unrealistic expectations for ourselves. Thus, people should be less
perfectionist about both themselves and others, and they should not set their
goals unrealistically high. It seems better to allow people to set their goals
high and then teach them how to use the struggle, challenge, and even failure
for personal growth.

5. Sustainable Happiness model (SHM)
According to the SHM, long-term happiness is a function of :
• one’s genetically determined set point;
• Circumstantial factors, such as where a person lives, age, gender, and past life events (for
example, previous traumas)
• Intentional activity, or how people choose to spend their time, interact with others, and think
about situations.
(Sheldon et al., 2010)To achieve lasting changes in well-being, making these changes in the
correct way is key. For instance, the pursuit of goals can help increase wellbeing, but only if the
goals fit the person’s interests and values.

6. Barbara Fredrickson’s Positivity
• Developed the broaden-and-build model of positive emotions.
• Recommended several ways in which positive emotions may be fostered and cultivated.
• listed strategies that can be helpful when trying to increase positive emotionality in life.
These strategies include the following:
• Be more open and increase awareness in order to appreciate the sensory experiences of life;
• be sociable;
• cultivate kindness
• cultivate healthy.
• distractions to get your mind off your troubles.

7. • dispute negative thinking.
• find nearby nature or natural settings.
• apply your strengths and virtues.
• use mindfulness meditation.
• do good or help others.
• practice gratefulness.
• savor or relish positive feelings.
• visualize your future.
• imagine you have reached your own best potential.
• record good things and positive events

8. • She also advised that relaxation strategies such as meditation, positive imagery,
massage, and muscle relaxation can be useful
• A unique style of meditation called loving-kindness is especially helpful.
• advised people to stop ruminating about issues and to focus attention on sensory
sensations, activities, or helping other people.
• asked people to notice the things in life that are positive, including little events that
bring joy.

9. Michael Frisch (2006, 2016)
Quality of Life Therapy
• theory is built on ideas from cognitive-behavioral therapy and asks people to rate
their satisfaction with 16 areas of everyday life.
1. Health 7. home
2. self-esteem 8. community
3. work, 9. recreation
4. learning, 10. standard of living
5. Love relationship 11. Relationships with relatives
6. Friends 12. Helping or social service and civic action

10. 13. Relationships with children
14. Neighborhood
15. Helping or social service and civic actions
16. Goals and values, or philosophy of life
QOLT is built on what Frisch called the CASIO model of assessment
• C – circumstances - when we attempt to increase our sense of well-being, we can
evaluate and change our objective life circumstances.
• A – attitudes - our attitude or interpretation of life domains.
• S – standards - our standards of fulfillment or goals.
• I –important - how important we believe an area is to our life.
• O – other areas - or we can focus attention on other areas that already give us a
sense of satisfaction.

11. Positive Health
• Health – state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely
the absence of disease and infirmity (WHO, 1948)
• Wellness – refer to the optimal physical, mental and emotional health.
• 1961 Dunn - the term high-level wellness is to describe a state of enhanced physical and
emotional well-being.
- wellness is a state in which a person has the following:
1. a zest for life,
2. a way of living that maximizes potential,
3. a sense of meaning and purpose,
4. a sense of social responsibility, and
5. skills for adapting to the challenges of a changing environment.

12. Positive Health
• The goal of positive health is to describe adaptations to challenges is and it is not
just coping and adaptation but positive growth.
• O’Leary and Ickovics (1995) termed such a process psychological thriving.
• we are engaged in thriving when we adapt to challenges creatively with better
adaptations and acquire even more potent coping skills in the future.
Vitality and Positive Health
• Richard Ryan and Edward Deci (2008) - conceptualized vitality as the energy
available to the self and defined it as a “positive feeling of aliveness and energy”
- vitality is enhanced by activities that satisfy self-determination needs for competence,
autonomy, and relatedness.

13. • is also related to better health outcomes.
• found that when self-control is intrinsically motivated, efforts lead to greater energy
and vitality.
Health Psychology and PNI
• 1970s - American Psychological Association created a new specialty area focusing on
the contributions psychology could make to an understanding of illness and disease.
• The goal of the health psychology division was to examine all behavioral factors that
might affect a person’s health. (Brannon & Feist, 2000).
• the early focus of health psychology was compatible with positive psychology—
namely, how to use psychological knowledge to enhance health status beyond the
curing of disease and toward greater wellness.

14. • psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) examines the relationships between psychological
processes (especially emotion), the functioning of the nervous system, and the
body’s immune system.
• Robert Ader, mid-1970s is the major pioneer in PNI research.
• Ader & Cohn,1993). - provided evidence that the immune system could “learn,”
which suggests a direct influence between the brain and immune responses.
Psychological Factors Important To Health
• PNI and the immune system research has shown that psychological factors can have
a measurable impact on our immune system.

15. Psychological Factors important to health:
• Positive Emotionality - positive emotions are advantageous not
- only to psychological well-being but also to physical well-being. (Fredrickson).
- people who feel more positive emotions are at lower risk for developing a variety of medical
conditions and they tend to live longer than less happy people (Boehm, 2018; Chesney et al.,
2005;
• Social Support - Grimm, and Pressman (2018) noted that “connections between social
relationships and health are some of the strongest and most consistent psychological
correlates of health in the medical literature”
• Social support can include either emotional support or a willingness of others to offer their
time or other tangible forms of assistance.
• Social support has been associated with positive health outcomes such as greater resistance
to disease, lower rates of coronary heart disease, faster recovery from heart disease and heart
surgery, and lower mortality (Bucholz et al., 2014; Salovy, Rothman, Detweiller, & Steward,
2000)

16. • Social support can increase compliance with medical treatments, reduce levels of
medication, speed up recovery, and help in adopting health promoting behaviors
(Pilisuk & Parks, 1986; Wynd & Ryan-Wenger, 2004).
Friendship and Confidant Relationships
Aristotle - described three types of friendship based on utility, pleasure, or virtue.
• Adler - developed his influential concept of “social feeling” He argued that humans
have an inborn capacity for affection, caring, and love, but that this capacity is weak
unless strengthened during childhood by family members and schoolteachers.

17. Internet Use and Positive Relationships
• Studies of Internet use and well-being have found that excessive time spent online
may be slightly related to decreased well-being (Huang, 2010).
Restorative Nature Experiences
• (Kaplan, 1992) have found that landscapes that seem both mysterious and relatively
easy to understand can reliably arouse people’s interest.
• (Hartig et al., 2003; White et al.,2013). Nichols (2015) - suggest that people prefer to
be in natural settings rather than built environments and the experience of being
near water releases hormones such as dopamine and oxytocin associated with
positive emotions.

18. Love and Positive Health
• (Seligman, 2008)Positive health benefits have also been found for feeling loved.
• (Nakhaie & Arnold,2010).- Positive marital relationships and love have been shown
to have specific effects on heart disease.
Compassion and Health
David McClelland mentionedassociation between empathy and health recalls by
suggesting that simply watching someone be kind and sympathetic to others may
influence changes in our immune system responses.

19. Altruism
• Altruism takes people away from preoccupations with their own concerns, increase
social bonds, and promote positive emotions.
Positive Coping
• A response aimed at diminishing the physical, emotional, and psychological burden
that is linked to stressful life events and daily hassles.
• Coping styles:
• attempts to change situations (emotion-focused coping)
• attempts to change the situation that caused a stress (problem-focused coping)
• simple avoidance of the challenge presented by a stressor (emotional avoidance)

20. • emotion-focused coping is “directed at regulating emotional responses to
problems”.
• problem-focused coping, involves the use of behavioral strategies that change a
situation or context in which stress occurs or cognitive strategies that alter our
perceptions of the stressor.
• emotional avoidance- the goal can also be to forget an anxiety, eliminate a worry,
or just not deal with a stressor.