WARNING: Don’t be deceived by the apparent simplicity of this practice. It holds more challenge than you might suspect. And it produces some potent benefits and results.
Practice Instructions:
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Every day for the next three weeks write down three good things the day held for you.
That’s it. The whole thing.
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The Challenges
It doesn’t sound very sexy. It sounds superficial and glib, like a throw-away sentence from a hackneyed self-improvement book. Again I say: Do not be deceived.
It’s easy to dismiss. “I already know my day was fine,” you say. “Why bother writing things down. This is silly.”
Over and over again in the posts at PLN you’re going to hear me warn you about the four most dangerous words in the English language: “I already know that.” The fact is, unless you have practiced Three Good Things previously, you have no idea of its potential power. It measurably improves the sense of well-being even in the clinically depressed. If your starting point is higher than that, you’ll get even more of a boost from it.
It’s not as easy to do as you might think. We tend to gloss over and take for granted the positive moments of our days. The positive emotions are fragile and fleeting. Like thoughts, after they have floated past, we tend not to remember them. Be prepared to feel a bit stumped, and even frustrated, when you begin this practice. It’s normal. Just make up your mind ahead of time that you will do it anyway.
For some help in getting started, see: Scavenger Hunting for Positivity Souvenirs: 50 Good Things to Collect on Your Travels.
By the way, it not only gets easier, but it becomes a lot of fun as you go along. Remember, what we focus on expands in our experience. By the second week, you may find yourself waking up wondering what good things will end up on your list today.
Installing a new daily routine takes effort. Whether it’s starting a new exercise routine or diet, a new job, or learning a new skill, in the beginning everything takes effort. Make up your mind to make the commitment to it, and let it be a challenge and fun. Think of it as more of a game you’re playing with yourself, a scavenger hunt for positive experiences, rather than as a chore.
The Pay Off
Some of the rewards you will get from this practice are:
- Enhanced self-awareness (And Self-Liking!)
- Exercise of your ability to focus
- Increased skill in noticing (An essential for building greater positivity)
- Insight into your personal positivity triggers (Wow! This turns me On!)
- Greater enjoyment of your life as you increasing tune your attention to things that make you feel good (It’s FUN!)
- Increased awareness of how much goes right in your day
- A collection of positive memories to savor at day’s end (Mmm! Bedtime Treats!)
- Something new to talk about over dinner (Awww. Giggles. Appreciation. Closeness.)
- And, in retrospect, a way to see the areas of your life where you tend to put your attention and to consider whether you want to make any changes. (More Joy in More Places!)
Practice Tips
- Make a firm commitment to yourself to do the practice. Do it for fun, or just to see if you can, or because you want to test it to see what kind of results it produces for you. But make the conscious and committed decision.
Get yourself a butterfly net to catch your good things as soon as you spot one. (Before they flit away!) If you have a pen and paper handy, jot it down. Or text yourself a message. If you can’t physically record it somewhere, make a strong mental note of it by creating a memorable mental image of it or by giving it a label of some kind. Noting good things as they occur throughout the day is much, much easier than trying to recall them at day’s end, believe me!
- Set aside a regular time for recording your three good things each day and designate where you will keep your lists. Make a new folder on your computer labeled “Positivity Practices” and a file called “Three Good Things.” If you prefer to write by hand, get yourself a new notebook or a place where you can keep your daily notes together and organized.
- If it appeals to you, consider making the practice a ritual. Buy a special journal for collecting your daily lists. Play relaxing music as your write, maybe light a couple candles. Let your daily review be a kind of meditation, an exercise in savoring.
- Reward yourself for your daily completion by checking off the date on a calendar. You might like the free, fun, progress tracking calendar at Don’tBreaktheChain.com
- If you miss a day, just continue the following day. It’s okay.
- Share the practice with a partner, or friend, or your whole immediate family. Make a date to share your lists on a daily or weekly basis.
- Share your experiences with other PLN readers by commenting on this post. Bookmark it, or look for it in the Positive Practices archives and add your questions or comments as you work the practice.
- Oh, and it’s okay to write more than three if you can’t decide which of many good things to choose. But don’t settle for less than three. And I suggest you try to limit yourself to no more than five or six when an especially great day comes along.
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That’s it. Make the commitment and get started.
Next week, you’ll find a different practice to add to your repertoire. So get a good start on Three Good Things right now. And, hey! Have fun!
I especially appreciate the reminder that:
“We tend to gloss over and take for granted
the positive moments of our days… we tend
not to remember them.
So true. We’re well trained to consider good news as no news.
So congratulations on your launch. This is good news that’s most definitely good news.
Thanks, Charles! It feels like it’s been a long time in the works, and I’m aglow with satisfaction and gratitude that it’s finally live.
I hope you’ll take this Three Good Things Practice for a whirl. I’d love to hear about your experiences with it.
I decided that I wouldn’t offer a Positivity Practice to PLN readers without trying it myself first, and it was surprisingly challenging for me to recall three good things in the beginning. In the end, I reaped a whole slew of insights from it. It was a genuinely broadening experience for me. Now I laugh as catch myself thinking, “Oh! That was a good thing!” as I go through my day. What a hoot!
Susan
Birds of a feather? The similarities in our thinking are striking. I’m going to claim reading this post as my very first good thing of the day because of the serendipity of finding another person who thinks almost EXACTLY the way I do.
For example, you caution people about the four most dangerous words, “I already know that.” Well, years ago I wrote an article titled, “The Three Most Dangerous Words” for my music students. I updated and posted it to my blog on May 27, 2009.
Those three words: I Get It!
As a private music teacher for 38+ years, I know the most critical time in a student’s life is the start. More important than any mechanical skills are the ATTITUDES about commitment and making the entire experience fun until it becomes a habit.
Susan, you have addressed this point right up front where it belongs. I am so very thrilled to be here. I KNOW that you KNOW what you are doing.
I am also impressed with your clear, step-by-step organization and simple to understand and implement instructions. I can’t think of anything I would add to your suggestions. You seem to have covered all the bases.
By the way, when I wrote the “I Get It” article, I wrote it for ME! This is not so surprising when you realize that we tend to teach what we need to learn. As a long-time student of personal development, I was the type that Tony Robbins referred to, “Teach me something NEW!”
There is a HUGE difference between merely saying, “I Get It” and actually DOING it. So I am hereby making a public commitment right here to put your suggestions into practice.
Yes, I know ‘simple’ doesn’t necessarily translate into ‘easy’. I’ve got myself in the way of myself, after all. But I’ll keep the four words you wrote in your introductory email in front of me all day to remind me to be, “Awake; Alert; Alive; Enthusiastic.”
All the best from Toronto,
Russ
P.S. It’s so great to see my good friend and mentor, Charles Burke commenting here as well. He is the one who introduced me to you. Heck, looking back at what I’ve written here, looks like I’ve already zoomed past my three good things!
Haha! You get gold stars, Russ, for find Three Good Things so early in the day!
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comments. I hadn’t run into Tony Robbins’ “Teach me something new!” classification before. But it makes sense to me. People read personal development books, in part, for the uplift they get just from reading them. (And that’s cool. Read ‘em for enough years and they saturate your brain to the point where you finally say, “Hmmm. Maybe I should try some of this stuff.”) But as with all pleasures, you run into the phenomenon of “the hedonic treadmill,” where you get jaded with one pleasure and need the fix of a new one.
I’m aiming PLN at those who have reached the point where they’re ready to do the doing.
And you’re right; the trick is in making the attitude shift to include the possibility that the experience can actually be fun. Synchronistically enough, I wrote about my own experience with a year long commitment on my High on Happiness blog tonight. I guess that makes it a dominant meme for us like-feathered birds at the moment, hey?
I love your brave public commitment to giving the positivity practices a whirl! (She flings more gold stars in his direction.) For the most part, the ones that I intend to promote come from positive psychology research that has demonstrated their effectiveness. In other words, the evidence is in that they work.
I hope you’ll share some of the insights and experiences that the practice provides you after you have had a little run with it. I have a sneaky suspicion that it won’t take you long find its colors running all over your days—even if, like the rest of us, you do have yourself in the way of yourself.
Thanks again for your comments.
All the best back atcha,
Susan