Even if the year 2020 turned out to be a difficult one to love, we thought of bringing its positive impact on our life.
That is going to help us stand strong and welcome the New Year 2021 with a happy mind!
Positive psychology interventions (PPIs) guide us through a futurist change to look into the same things with a different perspective. Positive psychology as a concept has 5 prime features to it:
Positive psychology helps us look at life with optimism.
Positive psychology allows us to be glad about the present.
Positive psychology lets us accept and make peace with the past.
Positive psychology helps us to be more grateful and merciful.
Positive psychology helps us to look beyond the temporary pleasures and troubles of life.
Positive psychology interventions, or PPIs, are a set of scientific tools and strategies that focus on increasing happiness, well-being, and positive cognitions and emotions (Keyes, Fredrickson, & Park 2012).
We mapped the events happened in 2020 with world famous PPIs and found many positive attitudes adopted by us
1. Kindness Boosters - We became more empathetic in 2020, We Connected with Family, Friends, neighbours, Pets and Loved Ones like Never Before
Positive psychology interventions focusing on compassion can be simple acts like buying someone a small token of love, volunteering for a noble cause, donating something, or helping a stranger in need. Kindness reinforces happiness and positivity.
The lockdowns left us with more time on our hands that we never had and not aware of what to do with it. Thankfully, all our friends and family members were in similar state. Before we thought of getting used to it, our lives were quickly filled with cooking experiments using online videos, experimenting with life hacks shared by people across the world, video meetings with long-lost friends, relatives, time spent with parents, kids, pets and many more things. Neighbours went from being strangers to second family.
Kindness is a trait all happy people possess. Studies have shown that happiness and kindness go hand in hand and complement each other (Aknin, Dunn, and Norton, 2012).
This was an opportunity to spend all great time with the family we had to move away from for our career or other reasons.
2. Savoring PPIs - 2020 made us learn new talents and skills
Savoring interventions focus on a particular experience and aim to enhance their effects for maximizing happiness (Peterson, 2006).
The core principle of these interventions is to encourage the person to grab every little aspect of experience – physical, sensory, emotional, or social (Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2009).
If our guess is right, almost everyone learned a new skill in 2020. We used the lockdown time to develop new skills and foster hidden talents. We got certifications from online courses, learnt dance, singing and music instruments using online video classes, exercised at home, cultivated herbs and other plants in our home gardens, baked delicious cakes and dishes. We happily shared the skills and new learning with others using social media.
The world got a lot many chefs, artists and musicians.
3. Gratitude Interventions - 2020 redefined the term ‘Heroes’ for us
Superman? Batman? Spiderman?
Who appears in our minds today when we think of a hero?
You guessed right. Doctors, Researchers, Healthcare Workers, Sanitation Workers, Police, Farmers, Airline, railway Staff, Civic Staff attended their duties and provided us essential help during lockdowns became our real life heroes.
These brave front liners risked their lives every day to ensure all of us could live and work comfortably from home.
Gratitude evokes strong feelings of positivity in the person who gives it and the person who receives it (Schueller & Parks, 2013).
We learned to be grateful for the selfless dedication of nurses, orderlies, doctors and other health workers who risked their lives to save ours. We felt thankful to truck drivers, grocery stockers, farmworkers and so many more who risked their lives to keep the life going.
4. Empathy PPIs - We became more empathetic in 2020
Empathy-oriented PPIs focus on strengthening positive emotions in interpersonal relationships. Healthy social bonds – both at personal and professional fronts are essential for happiness and inner peace. (Diener and Seligman, 2002).
We saw personalities like Sonu Sood as well as many corporates helped the migrant workers, labours who were worst-affected by the lockdown. We saw people showering love on Baba Ka Dhaba, fruit vendor Phool Mia in Delhi, a chaatwaala in Indore after listening to their difficulties.
Indians lit diyas together, Italians in lockdown sang together from their balconies, large companies like Mahindras used their resources to manufacture ventilators, masks and sanitisers.
5. We Learned to Slow Down, finding the real ‘Me time’
With the outside world on hold, we rediscovered hobbies like yoga, reading, writing, painting, baking, observing nature around and gardening. We even rediscovered watching great content on the smart box via Netflix, Amazon Prime of the world!
The entire world learned to slow down and be grateful for these small everyday things.
Overall, we trained ourselves to be happy during 2020!
Lets enter 2021 with a beautiful, healthy and happy mind.
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