How to Have a Good Day: Harness the Power of Behavioral Science to Transform Your Working Life pdfdrive com

2. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
It might seem counterintuitive to suggest that when we feel in need of a boost,
we should give one to other people. But it’s true. University of Pennsylvania
professor Martin Seligman is one of the world’s foremost experts on human
flourishing and well-being, and as he says, “doing a kindness produces the single
most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have
tested.”
3
An international team of neuroscientists led by Jorge Moll, director of
the D’Or Institute in Brazil, confirmed that when volunteers decided to give
money to charity, their brain’s reward system was engaged in the same way as
when they received money themselves.
4
(In fact, Elizabeth Dunn and Michael

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Norton, from the University of British Columbia and Harvard, respectively,
found that spending money on other people makes us 
happier
than spending
money on ourselves.)
5
The UN’s 
World Happiness Report
confirms that people
seem to find their own generosity uplifting, whatever culture they’ve grown up
in.
6
Finally, just as visualizing our past successes can help us rekindle a confident
state of mind by activating many of the same neural connections, 
recalling
kindnesses is almost as good as 
doing
them. A group of researchers in Japan
found that people felt happier after merely counting the acts of kindness they’d
done in the previous week; a North American team found the same.
7
So doing
one favor can repay you many times when you think back on it in the future.
How to be generous and kind, even on a busy day:
Give someone an unsolicited compliment.
Say something like “You guys
are always so friendly,” or “I’m impressed at how organized you are,” or “I
like your music [or watch, or other random thing].”