One way to enhance happiness and well-being in every day life is to start paying more attention to positive or pleasant events. So much of the time, we can get caught up in trying to avoid stress or hassles, solving problems, worrying about the future or thinking about the past, and reducing negative moods, that we fail to notice many of the pleasant things happening throughout our day. Our attention is focused primarily on problems and obstacles. This can be very effective if we want to be aware of and avoid problems and obstacles, but focusing on problems and obstacles makes it hard for us to notice pleasant things in life.
From what we know about attention, once you start looking for one specific thing, it is harder to see other things. For example, for a moment look around wherever you are, and try to find as many green things as you possibly can. On a piece of paper, write down all of the green things that you noticed. Now, close your eyes and try to remember all of the brown, blue, or yellow things that you noticed. Most of us will find that we don’t remember very many brown, blue, or yellow things at all. This is because we were not looking for them. As another example, imagine walking through a rose garden. Imagine that your primary goal is to avoid being stung by a bee or wasp or pricked by a thorn. What do you think you would notice most as you walk through that garden? It’s quite likely that you will be keenly aware of any buzzing sound, sensations of things landing on you, and the locations of all the thorns that could prick you. While you might notice the flowers, it would be hard to fully enjoy them if your mind is focused completely on avoiding danger.
Often, an important first step in getting in touch with happiness and well-being is to fine-tune your happiness radar. Practice focusing your attention on pleasant events. Look for them wherever you are. Even if you’re simply walking down the street, walk down the street with your eyes wide open, and look for beauty all around you. Keep your ears open for pleasant sounds. Change your focus, and spend more time looking for things that might bring you happiness, enjoyment, or well-being, even if these things are extremely small and seem trivial or unimportant. In other words, try your best to be mindful of pleasant events and a little less mindful of worries, concerns, negative events, and so on (Linehan, 2015). – Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.