How To Feel Better: 7 Science-Based Tips To Boost Your Mood
Strategies to boost positive emotions, decrease negative, and feel better.
Do you tend to feel a lot of negative emotions? Do you feel bad about yourself? Or do you feel unhappy about your place in the world? The science has shown us that we actually have a lot of control over our feelings and well-being (take the well-being quiz to see where you’re at). So here are 7 science-based tips to help you feel better.
1. Strengthen Positive Connections in Your Brain
The more we use the parts of our brain that are responsible for positive things, the stronger those parts will get. Working with positive information, positive memories, and positive attention make all those things stronger. And building these more basic skills can help us be more effective at things like positive thinking, which makes us feel better. One way to use positive information more often is to memorize positive words. Researchers (Bradley & Lang, 1999) have even tested words to see which ones are the most positive. Check out my positivity workbook for a collection of positive words to use as your ‘word of the day’ or in memory games to build these positive connections.