19 In What Way Can Art and Music Be Viewed as a Kind of Practical Life Exercise?

Humans are hardwired to pay attention to negative experiences.

We have a propensity to attend to, larn from, and apply negative information far more than positive information.

As such, many clients are unaware of what influences the happiness in their life from one day to the adjacent. At the heart of positive psychology lies the belief that people can lead happier, more than meaningful, and fulfilling lives by moving their focus abroad from the negative towards a more balanced perspective.

The wealth of research-based exercises available ensures that practitioners have a unique opportunity to help clients feel more pleasure, pregnant, and fulfillment.

Many positive psychology exercises are considered classics – and for expert reason. While activities such every bit gratitude journaling and loving-kindness meditation have been shown time and again to pb to positive outcomes, the goal of this commodity is to provide a variety of new and novel ways to include positive psychology in your work with clients.

The post-obit exercises can exist incorporated into several therapeutic settings to assistance your clients experience the fundamental pillars of positive psychology: the good life, the pleasant life, and the meaningful life.

Before you read on, we thought you lot might like to download our 3 Positive Psychology Exercises for gratis. These scientific discipline-based exercises will explore fundamental aspects of positive psychology including strengths, values and self-compassion and will give y'all the tools to enhance the wellbeing of your clients, students or employees.

Exercise 1: Self-Care Vision Board

Keywords: Self-care, cocky-compassion, inventiveness, inspiration
Treatment Modality: Individual clients and groups
Time: 60 minutes
Goal: To increase self-compassion through fun and playful creativity.

Self-care is the deliberate practise of activities that 'have intendance' of mental, emotional, and physical health (find 26 mental wellness exercises hither). The ability to attend to and meet personal needs through self-intendance has been found to increase empathy, immunologic performance, and has been associated with lower levels of anxiety and low (Schure, Christopher, & Christopher, 2008).

Co-ordinate to Bakery (2003), self-care activities likewise have the potential to improve self-sensation, cocky-regulation, coping, and balancing of self and others.

Instructions
Clients should think of as many potential self-care activities as possible, making sure only to include activities they would savour completing and that fit with their lifestyle and values. For each activity listed, clients should so detect inspiring and positive images and brainstorm words and phrases that correspond with their chosen cocky-care activities.

Clients tin then assemble their vision lath and identify it in a prominent, visible location to deed as a visual representation that reflects ideas for self-intendance and as a motivator to improve and implement self-care.

You can admission a comprehensive rundown of this practice and practical practitioner advice on the Self-Care Vision Board as part of the Positive Psychology Toolkit©.

Exercise 2: The Guest Business firm Poem

Keywords: Acceptance, negative emotions, mindfulness, emotional intelligence
Treatment Modality: Individual clients or groups
Fourth dimension: thirty minutes
Goal: To emphasize that emotions are fleeting, and even unpleasant emotions tin take value.

The Invitee House poem is a method of explaining mindfulness and the importance of acknowledging and accepting unpleasant emotions. According to Eisenberg et al. (1997), emotion suppression has been associated with both psychological and physiological health detriment.

Indeed, Hayes, Pistorello, & Levin (2012) suggested that attempts to command uncomfortable thoughts, feelings, and emotions by deliberate avoidance are at the core of many psychological problems.

When clients mask their emotional experiences or try to push button unpleasant emotions away, they can return amplified. However, by welcoming them as visitors, the intensity and bear on of those emotions can be reduced. In the verse form, being homo is like being a guest firm, and emotions are personified as temporary visitors that should be welcomed fifty-fifty if they are unpleasant.

The poem can also be used to explicate to clients that emotions are not permanent residents in their guest house; instead, they are transient visitors who tin be welcomed, stay for a while, and so leave.

The Invitee Business firm past Jelaluddin Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes every bit an unexpected company.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a oversupply of sorrows, who violently sweep your firm empty of its furniture,
still, treat each invitee honorably.
He may be clearing yous out for some new please.
The night thought, the shame, the malice.
Run into them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
Because each has been sent equally a guide from beyond.

Reflection Questions

How do you interpret the poem?
What emotions visit y'all virtually often? Why practice you call back that is?
How might it affect you if you welcomed all your emotions rather than denying them?
What benefits could in that location be in welcoming unpleasant emotions?
Can you relate to the feeling described in the line "violently sweeps your house empty of its piece of furniture"? Have you e'er felt this way?
How might you employ the bulletin of The Guest House to your everyday life?

Exercise iii: The Passengers on a Motorbus Metaphor

Keywords: Values, acceptance, emotions, self-criticism
Handling Modality: Individual clients or groups
Time: 10 minutes for private clients/30-twoscore minutes for groups
Goal: To testify clients the ways in which thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories seem to drive their lives.

Metaphors are efficient, meaningful ways to communicate about experiences and fill the experiential gap between what is or has been, and what tin be (Burns, 2017). Within the therapeutic context, metaphors take the limited purpose of assisting clients in reaching their goals effectively and efficiently.

The Passengers on the Bus metaphor describes the ways internal experiences seemingly bulldoze our lives. The metaphor can exist used to demonstrate the possibility of a life in which such experiences do not determine decisions; rather, they are accepted and sit in the heed temporarily like passengers on a passenger vehicle.

Passengers on a Motorbus Metaphor
You are the driver of a bus, the motorcoach symbolizes your mind, and your thoughts are represented by passengers. On your journeying, some passengers sit quietly while others make disquisitional and distracting comments, or shout directions as you drive.

Yous can choose how yous react to the passengers but every bit y'all can decide how to respond to disquisitional thoughts. Yous tin permit those passengers to shout and chatter noisily, while all the same keeping your attention focused on the journey towards your goal.

The Passengers on a Bus metaphor can exist reintroduced if a client experiences thoughts, feelings, or behaviors during subsequent sessions that may impede or claiming their progress. Referring to the metaphor, the practitioner might enquire, "Which passenger is being intrusive and distracting?"

You can admission The Passengers on the Bus Grouping Action in the Positive Psychology Toolkit©. Adjusted for use with groups, this exercise includes details on how to best set up upwards the exercise, three dissimilar scenarios for clients to consider, and evaluation questions.

Exercise 4: Sensory Sensation

Keywords: Positive experiences, awareness, savoring, mindfulness
Treatment Modality: Groups
Time: 45 minutes
Goal: To assist clients identify experiences from which they derive pleasure, comfort, and enjoyment through each of their five senses.

Sensory awareness is more than merely responding to experiences; instead, it is engaging with – and paying attention to – current sensory information. According to Jones (2011), mindful practices nurture the power to bring sensory experiences to the forefront of consciousness.

In doing and then, infinite is created in the mind that allows us to cease and smell the roses. Moments of intimacy, the sound of a flowing river, the view of a dramatic landscape, or fifty-fifty reading a good book, tin can all be immensely gratifying and comforting.

Instructions
Create five columns on a piece of paper, labeling each with 1 of the five senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and audio. Clients should then have 15-xx minutes to think near and write down the experiences that give them pleasure through each of their senses.

On completion of this step, clients should regroup and discuss how specific experiences give them pleasure.

Reflection Questions:

Were you surprised by annihilation you idea to add to your lists?
Are your lists extremely long or short? Why exercise y'all think that is?
Which of the items on your listing practise y'all feel every solar day?
Practice any experiences provide pleasure, condolement, or enjoyment in more than i category?
How can you increment the number of experiences that give yous pleasure, comfort, and enjoyment?
Can you commit to experiencing at least ane source of sensual pleasure from each sense every day?

Exercise 5: Positive Reminiscence

Keywords: Savoring, strengths, positive emotions, confidence edifice
Treatment Modality: Individual clients
Time: 5-10 minutes
Goal: To help clients cultivate positive emotions through savoring.

Savoring is the sensation of pleasure and the power to acknowledge, appreciate, and raise positive experiences. A complementary analogue to coping, savoring can help clients endure negative life experiences (Bryant & Veroff, 2006). When clients learn to savor the pocket-sized pleasures in life through deliberate focus, they begin to recognize and retain the good feelings associated with those experiences.

The Positive Reminiscence exercise tin can help clients develop the skill of savoring and build positive emotions by reliving a positive event from their by. Yous can access this practise equally function of the Positive Psychology Toolkit©.

Instructions
During the exercise, clients should take fourth dimension to recall about an event from their past that evokes positive emotions, visualize the issue in as much detail as possible, and focus on the pleasant feelings that were experienced at the time.

The client'southward focus should be on reliving the experience to increase both the duration and intensity of positive emotions.

Exercise 6: Gratitude by Mental Elimination

Keywords: Gratitude, mindfulness, awareness
Handling Modality: Individual clients
Fourth dimension: 5-15 minutes
Goal: To help clients avert taking things for granted and increase gratitude.

Co-ordinate to Koo, Algoe, Wilson, & Gilbert (2008), affective states are improved to a greater extent after mentally removing positive events when compared to actively thinking nigh the presence of those events. Simply put, mentally deleting a positive event can help remind clients of how fortunate they are and how life could be if that result never happened.

To begin the Gratitude by Mental Elimination exercise, ask the client to recollect most something skillful in their life correct at present and so take a moment to imagine what life would be similar without that one practiced thing. Clients should then write down the ways in which their life would be different without this one good thing.

You tin admission the total exercise as part of the Positive Psychology Toolkit©.

Exercise vii: The Self-Pity Intermission

Keywords: Positive emotions, self-talk, self-pity, homework
Treatment Modality: Private clients
Time: 1-3 minutes
Goal: To create a more self-compassionate attitude and reaction in difficult times.

Clients who are high in cocky-compassion treat themselves with kindness and business organisation when they experience negative events (Batts Allen & Leary, 2010). Further, practicing self-compassion may allow clients to access positive emotions more than easily and improve measures of life satisfaction, social connectedness, and subjective well-being (Leary, Tate, Adam, Allen, & Hancock, 2007).

The Cocky-Compassion Pause tin exist used as a starting point to help clients create a more self-compassionate mental attitude. This technique works best equally a homework exercise in day-to-twenty-four hours encounters when clients are aware that they are experiencing some form of suffering, like stress or discomfort.

Instructions
Invite clients to pause for a moment and focus on their animate equally they inhale and breathe. Next, clients should identify their hands on their body – reminding themselves that while this is a difficult moment, suffering is a part of life. It can be beneficial for clients to create soothing phrases that are personal and meaningful to them, such as "I have myself as I am" or "May I forgive myself for this error just equally I would forgive others."

You can find a more detailed breakdown of the Self-Compassion Pause practise, including practical guidance and background information as function of the Positive Psychology Toolkit©.

Exercise viii: Benefit Finding

Keywords: Resilience, positive emotions, trauma, reflection
Treatment Modality: Private clients
Time: 10-15 minutes
Goal: To help clients focus on the positive characteristics of negative life events.

Finding positives from a traumatic upshot tin outcome in a number of positive long-term effects. For example, understanding that challenging life events can be beneficial has been shown to heighten resilience, spirituality, relationship strength, compassion, and create a new sense of purpose (Affleck & Tennen, 1996).

Instructions
Invite the client to talk nigh a traumatic upshot for a few minutes, encouraging the free expression of whatsoever and all emotions and thoughts they have most the experience.

On completion of this step, the client'south attention should then be focused on the positive aspects of the experience. The practitioner may guide this step by request questions such equally, "What has the experience taught you?" and "How has the feel made you improve equipped to meet similar challenges in the future?"

During this exercise, the client volition exist asked to recall a traumatic life effect that may trigger negative thoughts and feelings. As such, information technology is advisable to follow the advice and guidance provided as function of the Benefit Finding exercise, which can be found in the Positive Psychology Toolkit©.

Exercise ix: Strengths-based Life Story

Keywords: Strengths, significant, and value
Treatment Modality: Individual clients and groups
Time: Clients should exist allowed plenty time to complete each section in particular
Goal: To assist clients find pregnant and value from their own experiences by exploring their strengths.

Strength estrangement is a lack of awareness of one's strengths, or a lack of management in using i's strengths (Jones-Smith, 2013). Strengths-based life stories tin can help clients locate the source of their strengths, utilize them to accomplish desired goals, and develop a sense of meaning and fulfillment.

During this activity, you will ask clients to write their life story in three parts: the past, present, and future. Clients can exist creative, but it is important to emphasize that their focus should be on their strengths in each of the three sections. Upon completion, clients should share what they've written for each function of their life story with the rest of the group or with the practitioner.

Instructions/Writing Prompts
The By: Write the story of your past. Be sure to describe the challenges you accept overcome, and the personal strengths that immune yous to practice so.

The Nowadays: Draw your life and who you are right at present. How do yous differ from your past cocky? What are your strengths at present? How have your strengths evolved? What challenges are you facing? How tin can you use your strengths to overcome these challenges?

The Future: Write most your ideal futurity. How will your life exist different than it is now? How can yous use your strengths to accomplish this ideal future? How volition your strengths abound? What kind of person do yous hope to go? How volition you be different than you lot are at present? What would you similar to reach? Finally, how can y'all go about achieving these things?

Exercise 10: Strengths & Values-based Introductions

Keywords: Communication, values, strengths, team-building
Treatment Modality: Groups
Time: 10 minutes per client
Goal: To introduce clients to each other in a meaningful style by sharing information well-nigh their strengths and values.

The Strengths & Values-based Introductions practise can act as a motivator and builder of trust among group members, providing clients with an opportunity to get to know one another deeply in a brusk amount of time.

This strengths-based arroyo allows clients to tell and retell their stories and, with the therapist's guidance, reintegrate parts of the self that might have slipped from their awareness due to cognitive rigidities or relational insecurities (Rashid, 2014).

In this practise, clients are invited to highlight their strengths and values through storytelling and to draw parallels from their story to their electric current life situations. In the process, clients can develop a deeper agreement of their strengths and values in the context of their narratives.

You tin can access the Strengths & Values-based Introductions practice every bit part of the Positive Psychology Toolkit©, where you will also find suggested prompts and guidance questions, communication, and methods to manage common barriers.

Practice 11: Of import, Enjoyable & Meaningful Activities

Keywords: Happiness, pleasure, pregnant, homework
Handling Modality: Private clients or groups
Fourth dimension: Dependent on activities carried out by clients
Goal: To help clients find meaning through enjoyable activities.

Meaning in life is an essential facet of psychological well-being with meaning implications for both mental and concrete health. According to Clarke (1991), the meaning we aspect to our lives is derived in keen part through meaningful activity. Similarly, Seligman (2002) suggested that a state of happiness is accessible only through activities that are consistent with noble and meaningful purposes.

When clients focus on activities that benefit others and utilize their unique strengths, they can transcend to college planes of accurate happiness (Seligman, 2002). In a nutshell, to find meaning in ane's life, one must first take part in meaningful activities.

Instructions
In this practice, clients are invited to consummate three important, enjoyable, and meaningful activities in a unmarried twenty-four hour period and write about them in detail. These acts should include:

A pleasurable activity carried out alone (for instance, reading or listening to music)
A pleasurable activity completed with others (for example, playing cards or meeting for dejeuner)
A meaningful or important human action (for case, visiting an isolated relative).

Exercise 12: Daily Motivational Awareness

Keywords: Motivation, sensation, action
Treatment Modality: Private customer
Time: five minutes
Goal: To help clients to develop and increase awareness of their motivation in daily life.

To begin the Daily Motivational Awareness do, clients should accept a few moments throughout the day to think nigh the things that excite and motivate them to action, then write them down. In doing so, clients have the opportunity to refer dorsum to the activity and reflect upon the extent to which their motivation is self-determined.

The practise can as well be used less formally, for instance, by request the client to ready timers a few times each mean solar day and merely doing the do without recording the observations.

You can access the do every bit well as part of the Positive Psychology Toolkit©.

Read More: 17 Motivation Tools, Worksheets and Activities for You and Your Clients

Exercise 13: Writing About Intensely Positive Experiences

Keywords: Cogitating writing, self-reflection, happiness, homework
Treatment Modality: Individual client
Fourth dimension: 5-10 minutes
Goal: To assistance clients meliorate their mood past writing about positive experiences and happy moments over three sequent days.

Writing virtually intensely positive experiences can result in robust improvements in a diversity of indicators of well-being. For instance, positive emotional writing has been shown to heighten positive mood, reduce land anxiety, trait anxiety, and perceived stress while too positively contributing to customer coping skills (Burton & Male monarch, 2004; Isen, 2001).

Instructions
Every day for three days, clients are instructed to choose a positive experience from their life, imagine themselves in that moment, and think about the feelings and emotions that they experienced. Clients should write about their experiences in as much detail as possible, paying item attending to the positive feelings, thoughts, and emotions that were present at the time.

You can admission the full Writing About Intensely Positive Experiences exercise as part of the Positive Psychology Toolkit©.

Do 14: The Signature Strengths Activeness Plan

Keywords: Strengths, goals, homework
Treatment Modality: Individual clients
Fourth dimension: 30 minutes
Goal: To help clients employ their signature strengths to accomplish a desired goal.

Clients should take the VIA Character Strengths Survey before working on their activity plan (discover more than positive psychology surveys here).

According to Seligman (2019), one of the about effective ways to develop and heighten signature strengths is to place one target strength, ready a specific and measurable goal related to that strength, and devise a concrete action programme to achieve the goal.

For instance, a client might select curiosity as a target strength and program to take office in activities that challenge their existing cognition and skills. Likewise, a client who wishes to focus on the love of learning could aim to larn five new words, including their pregnant and usage each week.

Instructions
Clients should choice one of their top five strengths and write downward their answers to the following questions:

How do I use this strength already?
In what areas of my life do I use this forcefulness?
What other areas in my life could I apply information technology more?
What are other ways I could use this strength?
What is my programme? What exactly would I similar to do? How frequently?
When will this happen?
What volition happen if I achieve my goals?

Exercise fifteen: Finding Your Own Example of Forgiveness

Keywords: Forgiveness, benefit finding
Treatment Modality: Individual clients
Time: 20 minutes
Goal: To aid clients focus on the benefits of forgiveness.

Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi (2000) identified forgiveness every bit a key positive private trait. Indeed, several studies indicate that individuals with a propensity for forgiveness show signs of better physical and psychological health. For case, Drupe, Worthington, O'Connor, Parrott, & Wade (2005) found that forgiveness had benign effects on systolic blood pressure level, diastolic blood pressure, and mean arterial pressure.

Additionally, forgiveness is negatively related to psychological distress and positively associated with life satisfaction and relationship health (Toussaint, Williams, Musick, & Everson, 2001).

Instructions
To begin this exercise, invite clients to draw a story of forgiveness – this could be from a children's story, legend, or movie plot. Clients should then explicate why they think the offender committed the transgression and why the victim chose to forgive.

Ask the client to write downward the ways in which the victim may have benefitted from the human action of forgiveness. The client should then think most a fourth dimension when they forgave someone and write down the benefits they experienced.

This exercise is adapted from 5 Steps to Forgiveness: The Fine art and Science of Forgiving (Worthington, 2001).

Exercise 16: Colored Candy Go Around

Keywords: Communication, play, engagement
Treatment Modality: Families
Goal: To encourage advice and provide insight into individual and family dynamics.

When families appoint in play-based therapeutic activities, they are provided with opportunities to communicate and articulate thoughts and feelings that they may not be comfortable expressing through traditional techniques (Lowenstein, 2010). The Colored Candy Go Effectually exercise (Arkell, 2010) is a playful and creative way to engage family members, specially in the early stages of family therapy.

To begin this exercise, the practitioner should distribute 10-fifteen colored candies (or colored chaplet if this is preferred) to each family fellow member. Each color represents a specific question, for example:

Green – What words describe yourself or your family unit?
Pink – What ways do you have fun as a family?
Orange – What things would you like to modify about yourself or your family?
Crimson – What things do you worry about?
Yellowish – What things do yous like well-nigh your family?

Next inquire family members to sort their candies past color and invite ane person to choice a color at random, stating verbally how many candies of that color they have in front end of them (for case, four yellow candies). This family fellow member must then requite 4 answers to the corresponding question; in this instance, iv things they like about their family.

They can then cull the next family member who volition requite their answer to the same question, and and then on until each person has responded to all of the questions.

(Annotation that the questions and areas of focus can be tailored to accommodate each family's needs).

Reflection Questions

Were you surprised by any of your family'south answers?
What did you acquire about your family unit that yous were not aware of before this exercise?
What actions will you lot take in the coming week to accept more fun with your family?
What deportment can you accept as an individual to make changes or improvements?
What deportment can you take every bit a family to brand changes or improvements?

This practise is adapted from Creative Family Therapy Techniques: Play and Art-based Activities to Assess and Treat Families (Lowenstein, 2010).

Do 17: Progressive Muscle Relaxation Do for Children

Keywords: Coping, relaxation, stress
Handling Modality: Children and families
Time: 10 minutes
Goal: To guide young children through the procedure of progressive muscle relaxation.

Relaxation training can be a useful tool to help clients and patients cope with everyday stressors.

Stressful situations reflexively cause the entire skeletal musculature to react immediately, oft resulting in prolonged, heightened tension, and a diverseness of pathological weather condition (Smith, 2007).

Progressive muscle relaxation involves tensing and relaxing various muscles throughout the body equally a fashion to reduce or eliminate tension and is an constructive manner to manage stress in children who may have difficulties concentrating on traditional relaxation techniques. The following exercise can be used to help guide children through the process of progressive muscle relaxation.

Instructions
To begin this practise, y'all should ask the child if they can recollect of a state of affairs that makes them feel worried or nervous. If they are not forthcoming with a situation, the therapist can utilize prompts such every bit, "How nigh when you have a large test?" or "How about when someone shouts at you?", and explain that these are all times when they can utilize this exercise.

Transcript:
"Let's practise this together; I'll testify you how. Start with your left mitt and arm. Accept a deep jiff and pretend y'all are squeezing a lemon in your hand. Squeeze it as hard equally you can. Imagine y'all are trying to clasp all the juice out. [Hold for five seconds]. Now pretend y'all take dropped the lemon on the floor and call up or say 'relax.', then permit your deep breath out and unclench your fist."

"Feel that relaxed feeling in your left hand and arm. Now, let'southward tense that same musculus again." [Repeat the same procedure a 2d time].

The therapist then guides the child through two sets of deep muscle relaxation of the following muscle groups:

Right hand and arm, as to a higher place.
Arms and shoulders, past stretching the artillery out in front, and then over the caput, and finally relaxed by their side.
Shoulder and cervix, by pulling the shoulders up to the ears and the caput down into the shoulders, similar a large shrug.
Jaw, by bitter downwardly hard on the teeth.
Face and nose, by wrinkling the nose.
Stomach, by tightening it very tight and making the breadbasket very hard.
Legs and feet, by pushing downwards on the floor difficult with toes spread autonomously.
Now pretend that you're a rag doll, and let your entire body get limp. Notice how adept it feels to be relaxed.

You can modify the script to make this exercise more fun by request the child to imagine themselves as a sleepy cat who needs to stretch his legs, or picture themselves squishing their toes deep into a dirty puddle.

This practise was adapted from Assessing and Treating Physically Abused Children and Their Families (Kolko & Cupit Swenson, 2002).

Exercise 18: The Quicksand Anxiety Metaphor

Keywords: Acceptance, mindfulness, anxiety
Handling Modality: Children and families
Time: x minutes
Goal: To illustrate the drawbacks of experiential abstention and the benefits of credence and mindfulness for anxiety.

The quicksand metaphor tin can help clients explore their methods of coping with difficult and unchangeable situations. In doing so, they tin can begin to empathise how their efforts to avert or escape such experiences may result in condign even more entangled in it (Stoddard & Afari, 2014).

Put merely, someone struggling to escape quicksand may not realize that the best class of action would be to come into full contact with the quicksand and 'get with it' rather than fight against information technology.

Instructions
"Y'all are walking in the desert and, of a sudden, you footstep in quicksand and rapidly brainstorm to sink. What practise you practice now?"

Yous can directly the customer's attention toward his or her reactions as their story unfolds. For instance, a more experiential response can exist encouraged by request, "What happens as yous try to escape the quicksand?" or "What are the thoughts that come to your mind as y'all proceed sinking?"

After exploring the quicksand metaphor with the client, the practitioner can encourage farther discussion by combining the vocabulary of both the metaphorical and actual situations. For instance, "What do you do when yous showtime sinking in your anxiety?"

Throughout this exercise, it is preferable to avert stating that struggling with quicksand is like struggling with anxiety – in doing so the client may acquire through rules rather than through experience (Stoddard & Afari, 2014).

Exercise 19: Last Impressions

Keywords: Celebrating success, value, positive acknowledgment
Handling Modality: Individual customer and groups
Fourth dimension: 5 minutes
Goal: To stop sessions with clients on a positive note.

Emotional states influence the call back of experiences with similar emotional tones (Tyng, Amin, Saad, & Malik, 2017). When people are feeling positive, they tend to recall pleasant events and vice versa. Further, Redelmeier & Kahneman (1996) found that the last thing that happens in an experience tends to colour the retentiveness of the whole experience. Information technology is therefore vital to end sessions with clients on a positive note.

Co-ordinate to Lasley (2015), an constructive mode to end sessions is by celebrating client successes – no matter how small – and acknowledging their value. To do so successfully, the practitioner must:

Deliver the acknowledgment.
Listen for the touch on.
Follow upward if the client did not empathise the acknowledgment or merely received it partially.

Instructions
To deport out this exercise, the practitioner should write a list of positive acknowledgments that tin be given to clients verbally at the end of each session. While it is a skilful thought to brand these statements specific and relevant to each of your clients, the post-obit suggestions are a good starting point:

"You sound very connected to your values, and you lot're honoring them fully. Well washed for stepping out of your condolement zone."
"You made excellent progress during the session, particularly [talk nigh specific insight or achievement]."
"Your commitment to growth is unwavering."
"I want to acknowledge the way you are taking responsibility past interim on what matters most to you."
"I am struck past your courage and your power to ___."
"I believe in your ability to overcome this challenge."
"I feel grateful that you shared your true feelings."

More Exercises from the Positive Psychology Blog

Bank check out this article, for more than compassion-focused exercises to include in your piece of work with clients.

Y'all can discover three coaching kids exercises to help immature children empathize their emotions and learn to solve problems positively.

Our Positive Psychology Toolkit© contains over 400 scientific discipline-based positive psychology exercises, interventions, questionnaires and assessments for practitioners like you to apply in your therapy, coaching or workplace.

Access a pick of positive psychology group exercises designed to increase positive feelings, behaviors, and cognitions.

This article provides an overview of five applied positive psychotherapy exercises.

For tips and exercises related to forgiveness, bank check out our commodity on the topic.

If the above is non enough, nosotros even share 12 free positive psychology PDF'southward in this article.

If you're looking for more than science-based ways to help others enhance their wellbeing, this signature collection contains 17 validated positive psychology tools for practitioners. Use them to assist others flourish and thrive.

A Have Home Message

Every bit a practitioner, y'all have a unique opportunity to assistance clients experience more meaning and fulfillment in their lives. I hope that the resource included in this article volition aid yous to promote positive changes in private clients, families, and groups.

Accept y'all used whatever of these exercises in your work with clients? Leave a annotate below; we would honey to hear about your experiences.

Nosotros hope you enjoyed reading this commodity. Don't forget to download our iii Positive Psychology Exercises for gratuitous.

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Source: https://positivepsychology.com/positive-psychology-exercises/