Title: 100+ Happiness Activities, Exercises, and Tools for Groups and Adults
Headings: 100+ Happiness Activities, Exercises, and Tools for Groups and Adults
100+ Happiness Activities, Exercises, and Tools for Groups and Adults
This Article Contains:
17 Activities for Building Happiness in Life (PDF)
The Importance of Fit
Realistic Expectations
3 Pathways to Happiness
1. The Pleasant Life
2. The Engaged Life
3. The Meaningful Life
The Happiness Action Pack
From Languishing to Flourishing: 11 Research-Based Tools for Increasing Well-Being
32 Proven Techniques that Increase Happiness
Pleasure:
Meaning
Engagement
How Behavioral Activation Works
Positive Clinical Psychology (Therapy Model)
Positive Psychology Coaching
28 Exercises for Finding and Building Upon Happiness
Positive Inception
26 Activities for Adults to Create more Happiness in Life
Gamified happiness
Happiness Practices from Around The World
PERMA Model of Wellbeing
Friendship Building Conversation
Forgiveness
Time Capsule
Best Self in a Relationship
14 Activities for Groups
Valuable Questionnaires
Worksheets Aimed at Building Happiness
The Happiness Trap Worksheet (PDF)
Other Recommended Tools
9 Self-Actualization Behaviors
A Take Home Message
References
How useful was this article to you?
About the Author
Categories

Content: Thanks to professor Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi, one of the founding fathers in the field of positive psychology who devoted his life to answering this question, we know today that: “Happiness is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated and defended privately by each person.” As those who have fallen in love or won a lottery can attest to, over time we all return home to that familiar level of contentment and our old self that fits all too well. As Parks, Schueller and Tasimi suggest in The Oxford Handbook of Happiness, what we need instead is a field of empirically supported self-help (ESS-H) rooted in research-based materials accessible to the wider public searching for proven techniques to increase happiness (2013). 17 Activities for Building Happiness in Life (PDF)
Well established research in positive psychology (Parks, Schueller and Tasimi, 2013) shows that a lasting change in levels of life satisfaction depends on combining activities from at least 3 key areas of well-being that include enjoyment, engagement and meaning and can be sustained by picking techniques that encourage motivation, or simply put those that you will enjoy and persevere in. To help guide you in choosing interventions, we begin every section by reminding you of the importance of fit and by briefly introducing a proven happiness theory that outlines the components necessary for enhancing well-being effectively. The Importance of Fit
Happiness activities work better if they align with our interests, goals, values and personality according to Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) who propose the idea of “fit” when implementing exercises to boost life satisfaction. Preference proved to be an important consideration in Schueller (2010) study where a participants’ self-reported inclinations toward a technique determined the number of days they engaged in the assignment over a week period. “A joyful life is an individual creation that cannot be copied from a recipe.” Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi
Similar approach was taken by Parks (2012) whose subjects tried a variety of exercises first and then chosen one or two to continue practicing.