Good Things.

I have been on twitter for a few weeks now and have fallen in love the whole concept of micro-blogging. I, too, have decided to write down a few goodthings about my day. I read about the idea from Diana at NoodleFood when I was browsing through their posts.

Here's what Jean Moroney wrote about it:

"Once each day, write down three good things that happened in the last 24 hours. You can write them before going to bed or first thing in the morning. You can write them in a journal or in a calendar or on a Post-it. You can include important achievements such as winning a contract or simple pleasures such as eating a good meal. All that matters is that you write down three such items, every day.

As you can guess, the purpose of this practice is to reinforce a positive outlook and avoid feeling overwhelmed by negativity. Even on the worst of days there are a few bright spots, and bringing them to mind helps you maintain perspective.I have tried writing down a few goodthings in the past few weeks have been trying it for a few days and it really helps.

Dr. Seligman ran controlled experiments to test the technique. Not only did his subjects report being happier and more optimistic during the studies, but they liked participating so much that they continued writing down three good things each day after the experiment was over.

This little bit of thinking each day has large emotional rewards. Why? Because it strengthens two kinds of value judgments:

1) What you hold as good: Every time you decide consciously that something is good, you reinforce, clarify, and concretize what "good" means.

2) What you hold as important: Important means "entitled to attention or consideration." When you spend a little time focusing on the good in your life, you are implicitly asserting that the good is what's important.

Not bad for three minutes of thinking each day."



I am usually a little sceptical about these "esteem boosters" which pull out a kick of esteem from thin air, but I have to admit, this one seems to be bang on target. The thing that makes it great, I think, is that I am now keen on making goodthings happen to me instead of sitting back on my ass expecting to have a good time for free -- ie without any effort. For instance, I constantly find am asking myself why do I have complete a task I have set for myself. If I set a goal, and not acheive it, then what is the point of setting it itself in the first place? More importantly, what is the point of simply thinking about the philosophy of Objectivism if I don't apply it to my life, as best as i can. The concept of the goodthing on twitter is sort of an extra can of fuel to go on and ofcourse there is the awesome pleasure I feel when I do post the goodthing on twitter.

Nothing beats the satisfaction of a task done.

Another awesome treat I had last night, was the spike in traffic on my blog when Diana retweet my post on these hilarious pics. Heh! There is absolutely no downside to it.

You can follow me on twitter to read my good things and I think I can say with a certain degree of certainity now, twitter helps people know each other better.