We are all aware of how happy we feel while reminiscing with friends about good times that we've shared, but did you know that frequent solo trips down memory lane can be a habit for a happier and healthier life?
Research shows that we use the same areas of our brains when recollecting our experiences that we use when we're actually experiencing them. Remembering good times is good for us and can improve our feelings of well-being on a daily basis.
Recalling a time when you felt terrific or beautiful, or calm, relaxed, or content instantly produces the same wonderful feelings for you all over again and you benefit from them. Remembering something that made you feel good, makes you feel good!
Of course, we shouldn't live in the past, but remembering happy times regularly makes us happier, healthier people and that makes it easier for us to enjoy our lives more fully.
Researchers from Loyola University have reported that in spending a few minutes each day, people who recalled good memories felt happier and more cheerful than people that focused solely on their present situations. Regular visits to our positive memories has been shown to help create more positive moods and outlooks in us. Like a joyful visit with an old friend.
Psychologists from Southampton University, UK learned that folks that first recalled, and then wrote down their positive memories reported feeling happier, feeling increased self-esteem, and feeling more positive about their friends and relationships.
Interestingly, Sonja Lyubomirsky and researchers from the University of California, Riverside, reported similar findings in those respects, except they found that people who DID NOT write down their happy memories had much stronger feelings than those who did.
So, if recalling a memory in depth has stronger impact than writing one down has, is there any benefit to writing them down? Indeed,
there is, but it depends on the type of memory.
Not to say that writing down your happy memories for posterity or to share (or remind) a friend or loved one is not beneficial because that is a terrific way to share the associated good feelings, but there seems to be an even better reason to write a memory down: when it's a bad one!
Because all of our memories are not happy, positive, or pleasant ones, we may want to keep a pen and some paper handy to lessen the negative, sad, or even heartbreaking feelings that come with our "not-so-happy" memories.
By learning that recollecting memories (good or bad) invoked deeper feelings than writing those memories down did, Lyubomirsky formed a simple, helpful idea, which is:
keep and relive good memories in your head where they invoke the strongest feelings and put bad memories down on paper where they are weaker.
I find this idea akin to sitting down and writing an angry letter with no intention of sending it, merely to get it out of your system and it makes sense to me.
By understanding that the feelings that we get, when we remember past events, are every bit as real as they were during those events and by knowing a couple of easy tips how we can maximize our good memories and feelings and minimize our bad ones, we can take advantage of our pasts to be happier, healthier people in our futures.
I believe that happier people make happier memories. Can you see a pattern here?
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