The ObservatoryTwo minutes: imagine the good thing away
Imagine that something you are glad about never happened, and notice what happens when it is still there
How it works
- Choose one thingWrite
- Imagine it awayChoose
Choose something good in your life that you may have stopped noticing: a person, a job, a place, a meeting that happened. Nothing big is needed.
Exercise in 2 steps, about 2 minutes. Doing it is part of Premium, which you try free for 7 days with no card. With Premium your answers are saved so you can pick up where you left off and look back at what you wrote.
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Why does it work?
In a series of experiments, participants who imagined that a positive event had never happened (mental subtraction) reported better mood than those who instead thought about how the event came about. Participants did not predict this effect themselves. The studies were carried out mainly on students and measured mood shortly afterwards, so they suggest an effect but do not say how long it lasts. Source: Koo, Algoe, Wilson & Gilbert (2008), It's a wonderful life: Mentally subtracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 95(5), 1217-1224.
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