I read a great article today about how celebrating the tiny moments in your life can raise your happiness level, increase your resilience when bad things happen, and help ward off depression. You can see the whole article here, or I pasted the text below this post.

This study confirms what anyone who has survived a deployment has probably already figured out – when the big picture is too overwhelming, you have to focus on the details to get through it.

Consider the daily working of deployment: Spending a year without my husband stinks…. I worry about his safety, I’m frustrated by the lack of communication, I’m overwhelmed by the necessity of “doing it all” while he’s gone. The year of separation may not be the best year of my life.

But couldn’t TODAY still be the best day of my week so far? Couldn’t RIGHT NOW still be the best hour of my day? When life overall isn’t perfect, you can still focus on the things that make you happy (no matter how small they are)… a sunny day, a clean house, fresh sheets on the bed, a dog or child that makes you laugh, a partner that you love enough to make you miss him/her this much!

There are lots of things to be grateful for during a deployment year, and as this research shows, focusing on them can help you get through the things that aren’t so great.

The military trains their personnel for resilience. Military spouses need to be resilient too! The good news is, you CAN increase your ability to bounce back from setbacks and bad days. You CAN learn to stay calm when things get hectic or complicated. And trust me, during deployment, hectic and complicated are par for the course. 

In my coaching practice, I teach spouses how to increase their resilience in just minutes a day, and access their inner strength when they need it the most. Want to talk about it? Email Me!

Don’t miss the opportunity to make the deployment year easier on yourself….

Cultivating daily positive emotions can help build resilience and increase a person’s happiness according to new research.

“This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go,” said Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology in University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s College of Arts and Sciences and the principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory.

“Those small moments let positive emotions blossom, and that helps us become more open. That openness then helps us build resources that can help us rebound better from adversity and stress, ward off depression and continue to grow.”

In the month long study, 86 participants were asked to submit daily report on their emotions, rather than answering general questions like, “Over the last few months, how much joy did you feel?”

Getting those daily reports helped us gather more accurate recollections of feelings and allowed us to capture emotional ups and downs.

Building up a daily diet of positive emotions does not require banishing negative emotions, she said. The study helps show that to be happy, people do not need to adopt a Pollyanna-ish approach and deny the upsetting aspects of life.

“The levels of positive emotions that produced good benefits weren’t extreme. Participants with average and stable levels of positive emotions still showed growth in resilience even when their days included negative emotions.”

Fredrickson suggested focusing on the moments that can help unlock one positive emotion here or there.

“A lot of times we get so wrapped up in thinking about the future and the past that we are blind to the goodness we are steeped in already, whether it’s the beauty outside the window or the kind things that people are doing for you,” she said.

“The better approach is to be open and flexible, to be appreciative of whatever good you do find in your daily circumstances, rather than focusing on bigger questions, such as ‘Will I be happy if I move to California?’ or ‘Will I be happy if I get married?’”