Marie-Josee Shaar, received a first degree in Organizational Behavior from McGill University, she received a Master of Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her credentials and experience have taken her work from the USA to England, France, Australia and Japan.

MJ has also prepared and/or instructed curricula for various universities and is a monthly author for the Positive Psychology News Daily and a member of the International Positive Psychology Association. You can see some of MJ’s articles here.

www.smartsandstamina.com

Ever had someone ask you to snap out of a bad mood? How did that work for you?

In general, changing our moods on purpose is a tall order. The adage “Fake it till you make it,” may be somewhat helpful, but it feels forced and therefore takes a lot of effort.

The two tips I’m about to share are quite different. They are drawn from my book Smarts and Stamina: The Busy Person’s Guide to Optimal Health and Performance (out in September 2011). The first will give you an instant mood boost no matter what state you are in to begin with (or almost!), and the second will help you build a stronger base that will make you more resilient over time.

So let’s get started. Positive psychology research has tested many techniques to help us better manage our moods, and according to the founder of the field Martin Seligman, the single most reliable way to increase positive emotions is to perform acts of kindness for other people. Kindness takes the focus away from us, and then through emotional contagion, we get the boost that the other person is feeling.

For example, one day I was feeling a bit low. To cheer me up, my hubby brought me a huge–and I do mean huge–bouquet of roses. The bunch was so big that I couldn’t fit it in any of our vases. That was already a boost in itself, I have to say, but the best part is that after filling our largest vase, we decided to distribute the rest of my roses to people on our street.

It felt slightly awkward at first, but then one of the recipients put a hand on her heart and said, “You just gave me hope!” That certainly was the most meaningful flower of the day. Ever since, I try to remember to perform random acts of kindness for others whenever I feel low, and in general, I realize that in the end I’m really being kind to myself when I am kind to others.

If you like the idea of being kind to yourself, you may also like this tip: at the end of each day, write in journal a few things you did that day that you are most proud of. This is my twist on an old positive psychology classic that is heavily supported by research. It’s often an immediate mood booster, and it trains the brain to focus on what works (as opposed to what doesn’t) over the longer run. When we see what we do right, we start to feel capable of more.

I used this tip with a client who felt extremely empowered about her career, but who felt she didn’t do anything right when it came to her health. “My success comes at a price,” she’d say. Indeed, she went to bed very late, never found time to exercise, ate fast food all too often, rarely chewed on anything green, and compensated for her lack of energy by drinking five to seven sodas per day.

We started her change program with my Proud Moments journal. I asked her to focus on her health habits only. The first few days, she had to make an effort to find anything she was proud of health-wise, but with prompting, she could find a few items to write down. One day it was eating a fruit, the next it was walking to a client’s office a few blocks down the street rather than hailing a cab. Those were small steps, but they taught her not to wait for earth-shattering changes to feel she was making progress.

Slowly but surely, she started to make more and more healthy choices because she wanted to have more to write and feel proud about. Six months later, she was getting a seven-hour night–much better than the six hours she had been getting previously. She started to walk to work and back every day and to lift weights once per week.

She was enjoying two fruits and two veggies per day and had decreased her soda consumption to one or two per day, choosing water the rest of the time. Admittedly, she wasn’t about to receive any health awards just yet, but the progress was tremendous. And it all started with writing down her proud moments.

Research shows that happier people tend to be more productive and creative, make more money, get promoted faster, collaborate more effectively, and live longer lives than their gloomier counterparts. If you feel you are too busy to invest in your mood, think again.

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