Research shows that simply pursuing happiness does not guarantee that we will become happier in the future no matter how hard we try (Rohrer et al., 2018).

The research asked people to describe what their strategies are for increasing their happiness and found that only those whose strategies related to building and nurturing social relationships like spending more time with family and friends or joining a nonprofit organisation actually experienced greater happiness after one year. But people who described strategies like earning more money, getting a better job or improving physical health, which are not related to nurturing social relationships, did not become any happier after one year. This shows that we can in fact be happier if we implement the right strategies. 🙌

So spend more time nurturing meaningful relationships, and love your partner more, your parents, children, friends, strangers and love God more as best as you can before it’s too late, encouraging and building them up. Think of every day as an opportunity to love more. As research shows, this is the most effective strategy for increasing your happiness. Spend time making others happy and happiness will follow you.

Rohrer, Julia M., David Richter, Martin Brümmer, Gert G. Wagner, and Stefan C. Schmukle. "Successfully striving for happiness: Socially engaged pursuits predict increases in life satisfaction." Psychological Science 29, no. 8 (2018): 1291-1298.

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Research shows that inducing physical pain on our body is an effective strategy for strengthen our mental health (Harmon-Jones et al., 2019). Pain, particularly short term, physical pain that does not cause injury such as intense physical exercise, taking a cold shower or eating very spicy food, can reduce our tendency to dwell on negative emotions after experiencing anger and sadness, thereby improving mental wellbeing.

In an experiment, people were divided into two groups. Group One was asked to put their hand in a bucket of icy water for as long as possible to cause pain, while Group Two was asked to put their hand in a bucket of lukewarm water. Next, both groups were asked to play a computer game of tossing a ball to two other players. The game was programmed such that the ball was thrown to the participants for the first 15 seconds, but the ball was not thrown to them at all for the remaining 1 minute and 30 seconds. This was to make them feel more angry and sad. Finally, both groups were asked to “rest” for 5 minutes to focus on their breathing, during which they were asked to write down their thoughts they had when a tone was sounded for 10 times. This was to measure rumination or how much they repetitively think about the negative emotions they had during the game even after the game has ended.

The results showed that Group One that experienced more pain mentioned less about the rigged game during the rest time than Group Two. In other words, people who experienced pain were able to quickly move on after experiencing anger and sadness. In a similar experiment, consistent results were found when pain was induced by making people squeeze an exercise hand grip for 60 seconds.

Pain is a useful psychological tool that we can use to improve our mental wellbeing.

So start your day with pain using a physical exercise or a cold shower and enjoy the benefits throughout the day! Indeed, our mental strength is made perfect in our physical weakness.

Harmon-Jones, Cindy, Emily Hinton, Judy Tien, Elizabeth Summerell, and Brock Bastian. "Pain offset reduces rumination in response to evoked anger and sadness." Journal of personality and social psychology 117, no. 6 (2019): 1189

Research shows that people whose happiness is greatly affected by emotional ups and downs have poorer psychological wellbeing than those whose happiness is less affected by emotional ups and downs (Wilroth et al., 2020).

The research measured people's psychological wellbeing, and their daily experience of positive and negative emotions and life satisfaction at the end of each day for 8 consecutive days. After two months, life satisfaction and emotions were measured again over 8 consecutive days. The results showed that people who were satisfied with their life more consistently despite feeling emotional ups and downs had much better psychological well-being compared to those whose life satisfaction changed drastically when they felt more positive or negative emotions.

Developing a belief that our life is full of emotional ups and downs but that they should not determine how happy we are will protect our mental health. Accept and acknowledge that life will present both positive and negative emotions, that both good and bad things happen to everyone.

It is the bad times that make our good times ever more worthwhile.

Willroth, E. C., John, O. P., Biesanz, J. C., & Mauss, I. B. (2020). Understanding short-term variability in life satisfaction: The Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) model. Journal of personality and social psychology, 119(1), 229.

One strategy the research found to be useful for preventing our negative emotions from taking away our willingness to engage in an enjoyable activity is to imagine the outcome for that activity rather than to imagine the process. For example, imagining the outcome of how good we would feel after having a party at a bar would help us to be more willing to join the party. We are less likely to join the party if we image the process of how good we would feel while being in the party.

In an experiment, people were divided into two groups. Group One was asked to describe a negative personal experience to make them feel negative emotions while Group Two was asked to describe a typical day in their life to make them feel neutral. Both groups were presented with two songs - We wish you a merry Christmas, (a more enjoyable song to sing), and Silent Night (a less enjoyable song to sing), then asked to either imagine how they would feel while they were singing each song, or imagine how they would feel after they finished singing each song. Finally, they were asked which song they would prefer to sing, and how difficult it is to imagine singing each song.

The results showed that Group One that was made to feel unhappy was less willing to sing a more enjoyable song because they found it difficult to imagine doing an enjoyable activity. However, when they imagined how they would feel after singing the song, they were more likely to sing the more enjoyable song than when they imaged how they would feel while singing the song. In other words, unhappy people are more likely to avoid enjoyable activities, but imagining how they would feel after engaging in an enjoyable activity will help them overcome the inertia.

When you feel unhappy, imagine how you would feel after doing the activities that you find enjoyable. This will help you overcome the psychological barriers that prevent you from doing the enjoyable activities.

Shen, Hao, Aparna Labroo, and Robert S. Wyer Jr. "So difficult to smile: Why unhappy people avoid enjoyable activities." Journal of personality and social psychology 119, no. 1 (2020): 23.

Research found that feeling rejected, excluded or ignored takes away our sense of meaning in life, which further triggers suicidal thoughts (Chen et al., 2020). In an experiment, people were divided into two groups. Group One was asked to imagine that they feel lonely, and cannot make any friends with any colleagues in the company they work for. Group Two was asked to imagine that they always feel accompanied by others, and have made many friends with colleagues in the company they work for. Next, their suicidal thoughts were measured by asking them to rate how much “I wanted to die”, “I wanted to kill myself”, “I wanted to end my life” etc. The results show that Group One that imagined to feel lonely and excluded reported higher levels of suicidal thoughts than Group Two.

The research found that those who feel lonely experienced higher levels of suicidal thoughts because they feel that life is less meaningful. However, the research also found a strategy that we can use to minimise the harmful effects of loneliness. It found that those who feel lonely experience less suicidal thoughts if they think about why some of the following values are important to them - athletic ability, living in the moment, sense of humor, creativity, independence, membership in a special group such as church, music, politics, relationship with friends, relationship with family, and religious values (Sherman et al., 2009).

Reaffirming one’s personal values helps us find strength when we feel rejected and excluded, protecting our mind from suicidal thoughts.

Next time when you feel lonely, rejected or excluded, reflect on your core personal values to help you find greater sense of meaning in life, which will create a buffer against suicidal thoughts.

Do not be afraid or terrified for there will always be someone who will go with you, and will never leave you nor forsake you.

A survey of more than 11,000 people across three countries (Hungary, Australia and the US) found that those who aspire to make the world a better place have the highest levels of happiness and wellbeing (Bradshaw et al., 2020). We can aspire for different things in life but if happiness is what we want in the end, aspiring to work to help others will pay dividend.

When we look not only to our own interest, but also to the interests of others, we will be rewarded with greater happiness.

Bradshaw, E.L., Sahdra, B.K., Ciarrochi, J., Parker, P.D., Martos, T. and Ryan, R.M., 2020. A configural approach to aspirations: The social breadth of aspiration profiles predicts well-being over and above the intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations that comprise the profiles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

In other words, when governments redistribute wealth but spend less, their citizens feel more happy on average.

Oishi, Shigehiro, Ulrich Schimmack, and Ed Diener. "Progressive taxation and the subjective well-being of nations." Psychological science 23, no. 1 (2012): 86-92.

Other research shows that the way we try to control our emotions also affects our political decisions. People often try to reduce their negative emotions that they experience following a loss of a political leader that they voted by trying to see the situation in a more positive light. This act of controlling our negative emotions makes people less motivated to participate in political action such as participating in a protest or donating money or time (Ford et al., 2019). The research surveyed 187 people who voted for Hillary Clinton who lost in the 2016 presidential election in the US, and found that people who were able to control their negative emotions by reframing the situation to see it in less negative terms were less likely to engage in political action in the future.

Beware of how your emotions and how you control your emotions affect your political decisions.

Ward, George, Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, Lyle H. Ungar, and Johannes C. Eichstaedt. "(Un) happiness and voting in US presidential elections." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2020).

Ford, Brett Q., Matthew Feinberg, Phoebe Lam, Iris B. Mauss, and Oliver P. John. "Using reappraisal to regulate negative emotion after the 2016 US Presidential election: Does emotion regulation trump political action?." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 117, no. 5 (2019): 998.

Our overconfidence increases especially when we receive assistance from others immediately as we perform a task or when we receive help by default, without having to ask for it. In other words, we can reduce the danger of feeling overconfident when we receive help from others by taking a short pause before receiving help, or by attempting the task without any help first, then asking for help if needed.

In an experiment, people were divided into three groups. Group One was asked to solve trivia questions completely on their own; Group Two received help where they were always given the first letter of correct answers for every question; Group Three received help as well but only after 7 seconds since each question was presented. After the three groups completed the trivia, they were asked to predict what percentage of questions they would answer correctly if they were given a similar set of questions without any help.

The results showed that groups that received help became more overconfident that they would correctly answer more questions on their own than Group One that received no help at all. However, Group Three that was given a short delay before receiving help predicted a lower percentage of correct answers compared to Group Two that received help without any delay. In other words, having a short pause before receiving help reduced their overconfidence.

In another experiment, people who had to click the button “HINT” in order to receive help became less overconfident than those who received help without having to click the button.

Life is full of tasks, activities and problems that require us to seek help from others. Unfortunately, we often become overconfident in our own abilities when we receive help, making us less effective. However, when we give ourselves a short delay before receiving help or when we attempt the task before receiving help can reduce overconfidence, helping us to be more effective.

Be quick to listen to others, but slow to speak or act especially when we receive help from others. This will keep our overconfidence down and help us remain humble and effective in our pursuits.

Fisher, M., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2021). Harder than you think: How outside assistance leads to overconfidence. Psychological Science, 32(4), 598-610.

The research reanalysed the data from a previous study that found the harmful effects of TV exposure on attention (Christakis et al., 2004), and found that this finding is not supported by more reliable statistical methods. For example, other factors such as family income, parents' highest level of education, and the child's energy levels and the ability to regulate attention were included in the analyses. Also, missing data were estimated and included in the analyses rather than removing them. Other variations in the methods yielded a total of 848 different ways of analysing the data, among which only 166 resulted in a significant relationship between TV exposure and attention problems. This shows that there is not enough evidence to conclude that TV watching causes attention problems.

McBee, Matthew T., Rebecca J. Brand, and Wallace E. Dixon Jr. "Challenging the Link Between Early Childhood Television Exposure and Later Attention Problems: A Multiverse Approach." Psychological Science 32, no. 4 (2021): 496-518.

In an experiment, people were divided into two groups. Group One was given difficult multiple questions, after which they were given 5 euros as a bonus for their performance no matter what they actually answered correctly. Group One was also told that another participant who was paired with them in the experiment did not receive the bonus. This was done so that Group One could feel the fear of being envied by the other participant. Group Two was also given 5 euros as a bonus but was also told that another participant did receive the bonus as well. After this, both groups were given another set of seven multiple choice questions, but this time, a preprogrammed computer robot, which was described as another participant in the experiment, sent a message asking for their help with each of the seven questions. Both groups could either help the other participant by sharing their answer to each question, say that they do not know the answer, or decide not to help at all.

The results showed that Group One that was made to feel the fear of being envied by the other participant, helped the other participant more than Group Two.

When we feel the fear of being envied by others after achieving more successes than others, we tend to spend more effort to help them to maintain better relationships with them. When we need a boost in our motivation to work to help others, we can think about our current successes that we have achieved, and see that others might be envious of our achievements. This fear of being envied by others will give us a motivational boost to work harder to help others more.

Van de Ven, Niels, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Rik Pieters. "Warding off the evil eye: When the fear of being envied increases prosocial behavior." Psychological Science 21, no. 11 (2010): 1671-1677.

In an experiment, people were divided into three groups. Group One was shown the action related words including “action”, “go”, “fast” and “run” for 52 milliseconds each,  which is too fast for most people to even realise that those words were shown. Group Two was shown inaction related words including “sleep”, “slow”, “passive” and “stop”, while Group Three was shown words that do not exist such as “tcaoin” and “pslee”.  Next, all groups were given a task whereby a string of four letters were shown for three quarters of a second (750 milliseconds), and they had to correctly guess whether another letter was part of the string of four letters that were shown previously. For example, XHGT is shown for 750 milliseconds. Then letter G is shown next. People had to correctly indicate whether G was indeed a part of the four letter string. This task was repeated 32 times. Throughout this experiment, people’s shortened cardiac preejection period was measured, which is the time the clean, oxygenated blood sits in the heart before being pumped out to the rest of the body. This is a direct measurement of how much effort we are putting to carry out a task. The shorter the prevention period, the more effort we are expending.

The results show that Group One that was shown action related words completed the task fastest and spent the most amount of effort, while Group Two that was shown inaction related words completed the task slowest and spent the least amount of effort.

It’s amazing that we put more effort in a task when we are exposed to action related words so fast that we do not even recognise them. In other words, certain words like “action”, “go” fast” and “run” can make us work harder while other words like “sleep”, “slow” can make us lazy.

Indeed, words can change our motivation. So surround yourself with action related words when performing a task to increase your level of effort and motivation.

Gendolla, Guido HE, and Nicolas Silvestrini. "The implicit “go” masked action cues directly mobilize mental effort." Psychological Science 21, no. 10 (2010): 1389-1393.

In an experiment, 36 people were divided into three groups. Group One used handwriting to learn Arabic letters and words; Group Two used typing a keyboard to learn; Group Three used visual learning by matching letters and words on a screen. Finally, all three groups were given an identical test to evaluate how much they memorised letters and words.

The results showed that Group One that used their hand to write and produce letters and words themselves enabled them to learn more effectively than simply pressing a key on the keyboard or simply learning by looking at them.

We can be more effective at learning by actively using handwriting. Use a pen on a paper or a tablet when studying literacy. This will help you learn faster and more effectively.

Wiley, Robert W., and Brenda Rapp. "The Effects of Handwriting Experience on Literacy Learning." Psychological Science 32, no. 7 (2021): 1086-1103.

In an experiment, people were given stress on either day one or day two by making them prepare and deliver a speech on why they are the best candidate for a job in front of two judges who remained unresponsive throughout the speech. To further increase stress, they were also asked to calculate and speak out the answers to subtraction questions for five minutes in front of the judges. The participants’ saliva samples were taken at various times throughout the experiment, and indeed their cortisol levels increased from 25 minutes after doing the speech and calculation tasks. 40 minutes after these tasks, people were given a task where they could choose to do either a more difficult task or an easier task.

The results showed that after experiencing stress, people chose the easier task more frequently. Stress makes us want to avoid tasks that require more effort. This shows that in order to nurture and maintain high levels of motivation, we need to be better at managing our stress, and nurturing our mental health.

Bogdanov, Mario, Jonas P. Nitschke, Sophia LoParco, Jennifer A. Bartz, and A. Ross Otto. "Acute Psychosocial Stress Increases Cognitive-Effort Avoidance." Psychological Science(2021): 09567976211005465.

A survey of 150 professors from a large public univeristy in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) course measured their beliefs about whether intelligence can increase over time (e.g., “To be honest, students have a certain amount of intelligence, and they really can’t do much to change it."). The survey data was matched with 15,466 students' course grades.

The analyses revealed that students, who were taught by professors with a growth mindset, had higher grades than those who were taught by professors with the belief that intelligence is fixed and cannot increase over time. Also, students of a minority race such as Black, Latino or Native American had much lower course grades compared to White or Asian students when they were taught by professors who held the belief that intelligence is fixed and cannot increase over time. In other words, when professors hold a growth mindset, not only do students' motivation and performance increase, the difference in academic performance between minority and majority racial groups becomes much smaller.

When we become leaders, managers, mentors or instructors, the belief we hold about whether our intelligence can be nurtured can significantly affect the motivation and performance of our followers or students. As students, we should seek out teachers who believe that our intelligence and abilities can grow in order for us to maintain high levels of motivation and performance.

Canning, Elizabeth A., Katherine Muenks, Dorainne J. Green, and Mary C. Murphy. "STEM faculty who believe ability is fixed have larger racial achievement gaps and inspire less student motivation in their classes." Science advances 5, no. 2 (2019): eaau4734.

The researchers collected 136 peer-reviewed journal articles, 11 doctoral theses, and 2 unpublished datasets which collectively examined 23,414 children (10,937 bilinguals and 12,477 monolinguals).

The analyses found that learning a second language does not increase cognitive abilities when taking into account the children’s socioeconomic factors such as their parents’ income and education. Also, published articles have a greater bias in their results as many studies that report a strong positive effect of learning a second language on cognitive abilities were found to have more imprecise results. After adjusting for this publication bias, learning a second language did not increase cognitive abilities.

Learning a new language certainly has its benefits but evidence suggests that we cannot conclude that learning a new language improves our cognitive abilities.

Lowe, Cassandra J., Isu Cho, Samantha F. Goldsmith, and J. Bruce Morton. "The Bilingual Advantage in Children’s Executive Functioning Is Not Related to Language Status: A Meta-Analytic Review." Psychological Science 32, no. 7 (2021): 1115-1146.

The research surveyed 454 people over five days, and asked them to report whether they had compared themselves with another person and whether they saw themselves to be worse, similar or better than the other person. The participants also answered how much motivated they felt to improve themselves, and how much positive and negative emotions they felt.

The results show that comparing ourself with others who are more successful than us can boost our motivation and effort, but at the expense of greater negative emotions. Also, comparing ourself with those who are extremely better than us backfires and damages our motivation.

The key to increasing and sustaining our motivation is to be inspired by others who are moderately more successful than us. But don’t compare ourself with those who are extremely successful as this will take away our motivation. Having the humility to count others more significant than us will give us an effective dose of motivation and effort.

Diel, Kathi, Sonja Grelle, and Wilhelm Hofmann. "A motivational framework of social comparison." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2021).

When all students submitted their assignment, the results showed that Group One that was encouraged to set a self-transcendent goal performed better than Group Two. More importantly, students in Group One who were also given the note that encouraged them to work to develop skills that can improve the lives of other people scored the highest marks for the assignment. In other words, people who set a transcendent goal perform best when their social environment encourages them to work to improve the lives of other people.

Setting a higher purpose can help us work harder but  ensuring that the people around us encourage and challenge us to make a difference in the world is also critical for sustaining our motivation and performance. Use your gift to serve others, and surround yourself with people who will challenge you to server others. This will help sustain your motivation.

Reeves, Stephanie L., Marlone D. Henderson, Geoffrey L. Cohen, Rebecca R. Steingut, Quinn Hirschi, and David S. Yeager. "Psychological affordances help explain where a self-transcendent purpose intervention improves performance." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2020).

In an experiment, people were divided into two groups. Both groups were asked to do a task of moving disks placed in a peg to one of the other two pegs. The disks were arranged in the order of size with the largest disk on the bottom and the smallest on the top and the rule is to move one disk at a time but never place a larger disk on top of a smaller disk. After completing the task, they were asked to use hand gestures to explain how they solved the task. Next both groups were asked to do the same task again. Here, Group One was given a different set of disks where the smallest disk was the heaviest disk that required two hands to move it while the largest disk was the lightest disk. Group Two was given the same disks as before.

The results showed that Group One that was given a different set of disks solved the task faster when they used more two-hand gestures when explaining the task than those who used more one-hand gestures. In other words, our hand gestures improve our performance in a task when the gestures are compatible with the task.

Use your hand gestures when you explain or present your ideas or when you are simulating something in your mind to practise a task, actively use hand gestures. This will help improve your performance in the same task.

Beilock, Sian L., and Susan Goldin-Meadow. "Gesture changes thought by grounding it in action." Psychological science 21, no. 11 (2010): 1605-1610.

In a field study, 5740 students who were enrolled in an online course completed an essay writing assignment, and assessed three other students’ essays.

Students who assessed very high quality essays of other students were less likely to complete the course than those who assessed lower quality essays. Being exposed to peer excellence discouraged them to continue with the course. 

The research suggests that when you are exposed to excellence by your peers, you should not think of your peer as a typical example, but rather a very unusual, exceptional case. This can prevent you from feeling discouraged by your peer’s achievement and believing that you are not capable of achieving the same level of performance.

So focus your attention on your own work, taking confidence in your own capabilities, rather than comparing yourself with someone else. Indeed, envy rots the bones, and jealousy kills your self-worth. 

Rogers, Todd, and Avi Feller. "Discouraged by peer excellence: Exposure to exemplary peer performance causes quitting." Psychological science 27, no. 3 (2016): 365-374.