Finding Three Good Things

Feb 19

The term “mindfulness” is a buzzword you have likely heard before, but what exactly is mindfulness? Although a majority of the literature and practice around mindfulness have Buddhist roots, a more secular version of mindfulness has grown in popularity throughout the West over the past few decades, securing its place as a helpful therapeutic technique in medical and mental health settings (Blanton, 2019). At its core mindfulness is simply about how we focus our minds. Many mindfulness practices emerged out of the movement, which can be described as mental exercises that are used to improve our sense of wellbeing. Just as an athlete trains their body through physical exercises, we can practice mental exercises to train our brains to help us focus our attention in a healthier manner.

One of these mindfulness exercises is the Three Good Things practice. Research has shown that practicing Three Good Things every day for two weeks can significantly increase happiness and decrease depressive symptoms beyond the effect that antidepressant medication offers (Sexton & Adair, 2019). One reason that such a simple practice can offer such a high reward is due to how it encourages our accessibility to positive emotions, such as gratitude, joy, hope, and love. These positive emotions provide a restorative effect on us as well as offer us a sense of purpose and meaning. Yet, in our daily lives we tend toward the negative, which is a phenomenon called the negativity bias. We notice what is going wrong instead of appreciating what is going well. We focus on what we don’t have instead of noticing what we do have. And the list goes on.

What we feed will grow, and when we feed the negative while neglecting anything positive, we will find negative thoughts and emotions far more accessible throughout our day. The Three Good Things practice helps us to reorient our focus as we practice prioritizing the positive for just a few minutes each day, cultivating an internal sense of gratitude. The benefits from practicing Three Good Things every day for just two weeks have even shown to last for up to a year later. So how can you practice Three Good Things?

First, you will want to set aside a few minutes each evening to practice the exercise over the next two weeks. I recommend trying this before bed.
Next, have somewhere to write, whether it’s a journal or a piece of paper.
Finally, write down your answer to these two questions:

What three things went well today?
How did these things occur and how did I contribute to them?

In the midst of practicing Three Good Things, you might have a bad day, and finding three good things may seem difficult or undesirable. The goal of this exercise is not to bury or dismiss the hard parts of your day, but instead it is to acknowledge the parts of your day for which you are grateful. We don’t want to cover something hard with a happiness sticker. Instead we want to grow our awareness that days have good moments as well as hard moments, exciting moments as well as boring moments, moments of laughter as well as moments of pain. Neither needs to replace the other, but each moment is worth our attention. Remember that mindfulness is about how we focus our minds, and focusing our minds on just three good things each day can have a tremendous impact on our mental health down the line.

For more on this practice, listen to this podcast episode from The Science of Happiness.