There isn't a single human being who doesn't want it, and for many, it is the primary pursuit in life. Conventional wisdom tells us that we need a good job, a great family life, and 11.5 months of vacation time to be happy. But we're going to focus on some lesser known factors of happiness that anyone can apply immediately.
Throw Your Negative Thoughts Into the Trash (Literally)
What happens when we treat our thoughts as material objects? This study found: ""When participants physically discarded a representation of their thoughts, they mentally discarded them as well, using them less in forming judgments than did participants who retained a representation of their thoughts.""
It seems like we can throw away our negative thoughts and be happy forever, but the fact is, as researcher Richard Petty says, ""they are not really gone-you can regenerate them, but the representations of those thoughts are gone, at least temporarily, and it seems to make it easier to not think about them."" For negative thoughts, writing them onto a piece of paper and then throwing it away appears to thwart their negative power, though it may only be short term. With repetition, one could possibly gain longer term benefits by ""practicing"" discarding negative thoughts.
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