The Benefit of Saying "Thank You"

Have you written your thank-you letters for all the gifts you received this Christmas?

You might be interested to know that there's been a great deal of research into the benefits of gratitude; grateful people, for example, report higher levels of life satisfaction, vitality, optimism and positive emotions, as well as lower levels of depression and stress*. I've talked about gratitude in several postings before, covered new ways of expressing gratitude, and looked specifically at Peterson's 10 minute exercise to increase your well-being by identifying the things you're thankful for.

This 30 minute BBC Radio 4 programme today explores the subject both for those people expressing their thanks, and for the people being thanked. It's well worth listening to for some real-life insight into the research.


* McCullough, Emmons & Tsang (2002)

Successful New Year's Resolutions

Will you be one of the 12% of people who stick to their New Year's Resolutions in 2008?

It won't surprise many of you who work in business that if you use the same approach to setting personal goals that you use at work for annual objectives, you're far more likely to succeed.

This BBC article covers many of the key elements, which are often referred to in business by the SMART acronym: i.e. your goals should be:

S - Specific
M - Measurable
A - Achievable
R - Realistic
T - Time-based

So for personal goals:

i) make sure they're well-defined rather than vague,
ii) make sure you can measure your progress towards the goal and tell when you've achieved it
iii) minimise the conflict between achieving this goal and other areas in your life. Take small steps.
iv) are you willing and able? Make sure you have enough resources (e.g. time, money etc) to achieve the goal
v) set a time for starting and finishing, and give yourself enough but not too much..

It's interesting to see that, according to research by Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, men are 22% more likely to succeed when they set well-defined goals, such as losing a pound a week rather than just saying they wanted to lose weight.

Women, on the other hand, can increase their chances of success if they tell other people what their goals are. Sharing your goals publicly has really taken off in the US, with websites such as Caroline Miller's your100things.com.

And if you want to take part in Professor Wiseman's New Year's Resolution Experiment for 2008, sign up here.

Good luck!

How to Keep your New Year Resolutions

If you still haven't broken your New Year Resolutions yet [ :-) ... of course you haven't, just teasing...] you might be interested in taking part in some scientific research which is being undertaken at University of Hertfordshire in the UK.

It was reported in the Guardian on Friday 30th December ("Psychologists seek key to successful new year resolutions") that Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University, is hoping to get around 10,000 people to take part in this on-line experiment. The point of the research is to find out what are the best ways of motivating people to keep to their resolutions.

So, even if you don't succeed, you'll still be providing some useful input to the research! If you want to take part, simply log on to newyearscience.co.uk.