It’s easy to forget the positive things about yourself and your life.
It’s even easier to focus in on the negative parts and beat yourself up about your shortcomings and mistakes that you’ve made.
And according to a New York Times article published earlier this year, there’s even research that supports the fact that the human brain by nature, recalls negative emotions and memories more often than positive ones.
But just because something is easy doesn’t mean it’s good for you. It’s like eating ramen every night: it’s cheap and easy to make, but usually: it’s far from satisfying, has little nutritional value and what it does offer is probably making you sick. (Jesus, the sodium alone. Insanely high.) I mean at least throw some veggies on it or an egg.
Crafting a healthy self-image is a rigorous task. You can’t just think happy thoughts. In order to remind yourself of your best qualities you have to give your brain something to work with: Good, happy vivid memories of you doing something worthwhile with your talents. And you’ll have to do them often, because the brain likes repetition. That’s how you learn and remember stuff: connections are formed between neurons in your brain and those connections get stronger the more you practice or learn to do something.
You have to strengthen your strengths.
Day 6’s activity was all about just that: Re-discovering my strengths and putting them to use. As recommended by the 14 Days article, I rediscovered my strengths by taking a quiz on ViaMe.org. My results included a ranked list of my best personality traits. And according to the results, my “top strength” is…*drumroll* *maybe a guitar solo here*…Humor!
According to the ViaMe! website:
“Your Top Character Strength: Humor. You like to laugh and tease. Bringing smiles to other people is important to you. You try to see the light side of all situations.”
Ok, cool. I can get behind that. Part one of Day 6’s task: Done!
Part two, even though it’s after midnight as I write this, isn’t complete. But I have a good reason. It’s because I’m going to put my sense of humor to use, in a small but I think helpful way for you guys, my readers. I love to laugh and more importantly I love to share what makes me laugh. So I’m going to attach a list of links to YouTube videos, memes and other hilarious bits that have made me laugh over the years to this blog post.
As the project goes on (and hopefully after that), I’d like to keep going down the list of my best strengths and pick a different activity to help strengthen each one. So far I feel great about how I’m strengthening my sense of humor!
And now, without further ado, here’s my List of Laughs!
As always, I hope you enjoyed this post. (And the List!) Don’t hesitate to let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your opinions, questions and stories! I’d also like to thank SELF Magazine for posting the article, “14 Days to a Happier, Healthier You!” , which inspired this blog post.
Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a lovely day!
Anita M. George: Journalist, Writer 