I came across this article on the Psyblog website mixed in with older posts. It caught my attention when I saw the words live happy and iphone. The article talks about how happiness is influenced by three factors: genes, our circumstances or situations, and our actions/reactions we choose everyday. The first two factors cannot be changed. I mean you can try to avoid certain circumstances or situations but you will always have circumstances in your life. (genes obviously cannot be changed .... unless there is some scientific method to do that which I am unaware of) The only factor that can be changed is the third. You can change how you act/react towards situations.
There has been recent psychological research done that proves certain or particular types of activities can increase a person's happiness levels. The happiness levels can be improved for long and short periods of time. However, it may be a struggle to continue or keep up the activities that make a person happy. So here is where the iphone and ipod touch comes in. Signal Patterns, in conjunction with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, have created an application for your iphone and ipod touch called Live Happy which uses positive research to help brighten people's days. The application allows people to set goals, evaluate them, and keep track of them; directly express gratitude; keep a gratitude journal; reminisce back to happy days, picture yourself at your best or the best you can be; remember acts of kindness; and it also has questions that you can ask Dr. Lyubomirsky.
I think this is an interesting way to use technology. I would never have thought that by downloading an application or acting on some of the simple things listed above would improve a person's level of happiness.
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Hmm… I don’t have an iPhone, but this was interesting. Being able to keep a gratitude journal on your iPhone or keep track of your goals can be encouraging, especially on tiresome day. It’s interesting how a simple activity can brighten a person’s day. If I did have an iPhone, I would probably try this application out.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post on our app; hope you have a chance to try it out. If you like it, feel free to add a review in the App Store and/or join our discussions about positive psych on FB (http://www.facebook.com/LiveHappy)
ReplyDeleteThat's a cool article, I had never heard of that before. I think its nice that apple is trying to help people live a better life, but I wonder how well it actually works. I don't have an iPhone or iTouch, so I guess I'll never find out for myself. It would be interesting to see reviews from users of the application.
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