When you’ve had a bad day, and someone tells you to “Cheer up!” for some, that might be the exact thing they needed to hear to turn their day around from bad to better. For others, this might be one of the most irritating things to hear. For the ones who find it irritating, I get it. How can one person possibly think saying “Cheer up!” could fix the day's awful traffic, spilled coffee on your laptop, an argument with a loved one, or bad breaking news? It's okay to sit in the emotions of our bad day. It’s good to acknowledge and feel how you’re feeling. Now let’s look at the individual who was able to flip their day around when someone told them to “Cheer up!”. How exactly does this work?

What is Positive Psychology?

Positive Psychology is a branch of psychology that focuses on the correlation between thoughts and behaviors and feelings of overall happiness, contentment, and emotional well-being. Its rationale is similar to that of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, in which a cognitive shift can impact a shift in behavior. The shift in thinking is no easy task and requires practice and patience with yourself. The phrase “Cheer up” from someone other than yourself is used as an example to display what our own inner dialogue with ourselves may look like in practice when trying to shift our thinking to change our behavior and mindset.

An exercise to practice Positive Psychology:

At the end of the day, before you’re about to go to sleep, reflect on your day. Regardless of the kind of day you had, write down (in whatever way you prefer) three things about your day that you enjoyed. While this is practicing gratitude, it’s also shifting how you think about the day as a whole. Let’s say you woke up with a flat tire, so automatically, you think the whole day is bad. But then you realize that you loved your morning tea and it was made just the way you like it, you got to listen to music that made you happy, and you liked your outfit that day. While it doesn’t take away the emotions and feelings relating to your flat tire, it shifts your mindset from the negative that happened that day to the smaller things that happened that were positive.