Have you heard of the Three Good Things intervention? The magic word behind it is gratitude. Here I’m digging deeper into how gratitude and Three Good Things can increase your happiness and wellbeing. Did you know that gratitude can even boost your relationships ans self-esteem?

It seems even too simple, yet it works. The Three Good Things gratitude intervention is one of the very few scientifically tested interventions that has been proven to increase happiness long-term.

This is it in a nutshell: The Three Good Things is a positive challenge where you’ll need to take about 3 minutes of your day, every day, for one week, and reflect upon the positive events in your day.

I’ll walk you through the basics – how it works and why – and then dive deeper into the power of gratitude.

How does the Three Good Things intervention work

Here are the three very simple steps:

1. Every night for 7 days, find a calm space and some pen and paper.
2. Write down 3 things that went well for you that day.
3. Then, write down why did these things happen.

The three things you write don’t need to be earthshaking in importance. As long as they’re genuine you’re good to go.

The Three Good Things is all about learning to direct attention to positive instead of negative and to see one’s active role in positive experiences.

For example: My grandma baked my favourite chocolate chip cookies today. As for the why, well, both work just great: My grandma is very thoughtful or I thought ahead and reminded her which cookies are my favourites.

Why does the Three Good Things make you happier?

Here’s the science behind it: In their 2005 study on increasing individual happiness, Martin Seligman (he’s one of the founders of the Positive Psychology movement) together with other researchers tested 5 happiness interventions against a control intervention. What they found was that 3 interventions had the power to boost happiness and lower depression over a six month time period. The Three Good Things was one of them.

Breaking it down, the Three Good Things is a gratitude intervention. The goal of it is to increase your experience of positive emotions through gratitude. (If you’re interested, you can read more how happiness has been defined and operationalised here!)

In essence, gratitude means Being aware of and thankful for the good things that happen; taking time to express thanks according to VIA Institute on Character (a key body in Positive Psychology research).

Increasing your awareness of good things around you ultimately rewires your thinking and directs your attention towards the positive (versus the negative). This makes you happier.

Interestingly, gratitude has been linked to other positive outcomes, too, like higher self-esteem, better coping in crises, and even better relationships. Gratitude can also improve physical health. In this Forbes article there are even more benefits listed.

Oh, what were the other happiness interventions that can increase happiness and wellbeing long-term? Here they are:

• Three Good Things
• Gratitude Visit
• Using signature strengths in a new way

Don’t forget the last part – the why

To have more control over your emotions and to understand yourself better, pay special attention to the why question.

When you causally explain the good things happening to you you start seeing yourself as capable to influence your own experience.

That’s why the second part is key.

You have the power. You can choose.

Actively directing your attention to the positive influences your whole experience.

Dwelling on negative, on the other hand, sets up for anxiety and depression. The Three Good Things is all about learning to direct attention to positive instead of negative and to see one’s active role in positive experiences.

Why writing down the Three Good Things is important

What we’re aiming for here is to reflect back and savour your experience. To see your positive experiences from each day written down is way more powerful than just pondering over them in your mind. Try it for yourself.

Why we might find practicing gratitude so hard

Maybe you had a crappy day at work. Or it’s been raining the whole day and you had to go through the day in wet socks. Or you’re just on a bad mood.

Seligman has an interesting, if somewhat simplified, way to explain the difficulty in focusing on the positive in his book Flourish:

For sound evolutionary reasons, most of us are not nearly as good at dwelling on good events as we are at analyzing bad events. Those of our ancestors who spent a lot of time basking in the sunshine of good events, when they should have been preparing for disaster, did not survive the Ice Age. So to overcome our brains’ natural catastrophic bent, we need to work on and practice this skill of thinking about what went well.

Remember: any three good things are enough.

You might have heard a bird sign on your way home because you stopped and payed attention. You smelled your morning coffee with a smile on your face. You danced home alone.

The key is to keep going. Research shows that people who stick to the exercise became happier (a finding reinforced also by Professor Sonya Lyubomirsky in her book The How of Happiness: A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want – but that’s another story!)

Let me know about your experienced with the Three Good Things yourself, I would love to hear from you!

Love,

Heini