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Popular Articles

Crazy-Makers: Dealing with Passive-Aggressive People

Why Are People Mean? Don't Take It Personally!

When You Have Been Betrayed

Struggling to Forgive: An Inability to Grieve

Happy Habits: 50 Suggestions

The Secret of Happiness: Let It Find You (But Make the Effort)

Excellence vs. Perfection

Depression is Not Sadness

20 Steps to Better Self-Esteem

7 Rules and 8 Methods for Responding to Passive-aggressive People

What to Do When Your Jealousy Threatens to Destroy Your Marriage

Happiness is An Attitude

Guide to How to Set Achieveable Goals

Catastrophe? Or Inconvenience?

Popular Audios

Panic Assistance

Motivational Audios

Mindfulness Training

Rational Thinking

Relaxation for Children

Loving Kindness Meditation

Self-Esteem Exercise

Lies You Were Told

Choosing Happiness

Audio Version of Article: Crazy-Makers: Passive-Aggressive People

Audio Version of Article: Why Are People Mean? Don't Take It Personally!

Audio Version of Article: Happiness Is An Attitude

All Audio Articles

Happy Habits: 50 Suggestions--page 4

by Monica A. Frank, Ph.D.
"Happiness is not something you achieve. In fact, the more you try to find happiness, the less likely you will be happy. Happiness occurs by how you live your life."

SUGGESTION 8: ASSESS YOUR HAPPINESS

The Happy Habits app includes a test "Your Happiness Assessment" to help you identify the obstacles to your happiness (soon to be on this website as well). A number of obstacles can interfere with allowing happiness into your life. Understanding your obstacles as well as your strengths can help you create the conditions for happiness to find you.

The app contains a test "Your Happiness Assessment" to help you examine happiness in your life and to provide direction and suggestions for improving your opportunity for happiness. The test consists of 119 items that assess 14 different factors that contribute to happiness: optimism, health activities, locus of control, compassion, trusting of others, affiliation, pleasantness, emotional stability, conscientiousness, assertiveness, self-confidence, gratefulness, approval-seeking, and playfulness.

As this assessment is meant for self-improvement, some of the information may be uncomfortable because it can be difficult to look at yourself. However, by honestly responding you can obtain greater insight into yourself which can lead to developing a plan to removing the obstacles to happiness.

SUGGESTION 9: TAKE OR REVIEW THE COGNITIVE STYLES TEST

Take a test to learn about your thinking styles that can contribute to stress and prevent satisfaction and happiness in life. Download the app "Irrational Thinking CBT Test" by Excel At Life (test soon to be on website) and take the test to learn about your cognitive styles. Your cognitive styles can show you the areas of your thinking that can interfere with developing the conditions for happiness.

If you find that you have irrational thinking styles based on the results of the test, you will likely find the methods of cognitive therapy such as the cognitive diary helpful to improving your life. By using these techniques you can remove the obstacles to success, satisfaction, and happiness in your life.

Once you take the test, it is important to frequently review the results so that you can keep in mind the thinking that you need to address. As with any of the CBT methods, the more repetition the more benefit can be obtained. This test can also be emailed so that you can share it or have access to it outside of the app.

SUGGESTION 10: READ ABOUT USING THE COGNITIVE DIARY

The cognitive diary is an important tool for changing irrational thinking that can interfere with creating the conditions for happiness. It is a CBT method that helps you to change irrational thinking by recording events that occur, your feelings and self-talk in reaction to the event, and how you can challenge the irrational self-talk.

Often people are aware of how their self-talk discourages them or prevents them from achieving what they want but they feel as if they can't change the way they think. Research with cognitive therapy has shown that thinking can be changed with frequent attention and repetition of the more accurate self-talk.

It is not enough to just know that your thought may be inaccurate or irrational, you need to deliberately and consciously change the thought to one that will allow you to handle a situation better. The cognitive diary provides the means for doing this. You can download the app "Cognitive Diary CBT Self-Help" by Excel At Life to help you challenge this thinking. In addition, read the article Undersanding and Using the Cognitive Diary. This website has a cognitive form to help you learn how to use the diary format.

SUGGESTION 11: USE THE HAPPINESS JOURNAL

The Happy Habits app includes a Happiness Journal where you can record daily affirmations and write about positive events in your life. Keeping a daily record allows you to review your list in Affirmation History. Reviewing your list is an important CBT tool because repetition helps people to change ways of thinking or to establish new behaviors. The more you review your list, the more it helps you keep a positive outlook.

The daily affirmations includes a list of examples from different areas of life that you can use as they are or modify to fit you. The positive events can be anything you want, they don't have to be major events. In fact, it is best to include small things that you would otherwise forget such as "I listened to the birds singing on my daily walk" or "I saw a meteor shower looking up into the night sky."

In addition, you may create a daily to do list from the Suggestions list. As you remove items from the list, they will be included in your daily Points list. You may also manually add items to your daily Points list. You can edit your entries or write an entry for a previous date that you missed.

For those who don't have an Android device you can still use the same concept of writing affirmations and positive events to review. READ MORE: page 5