5/27/2017 One Exercise Sure to Make You Feel Better About Yourself | Psychology Today

Jennice Vilhauer Ph.D.
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Posted Jan 17, 2015

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I have been treating patients using cognitive
(https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/cognition) therapies for
almost 15 years, and one of the most successful exercises I have ever
seen work to help them re­engage their sense of well­being is so simple
that each and every time I convince someone to do it, I am still
remarkably struck by how effective it is.

Before I share this exercise with you, I want you to know that the
difficult part is not doing the activity. It is making yourself believe that
the activity will have enough benefit that you will put forth the actual
effort to do it, and experience the results.

Often when I give this assignment to patients, they come back for two
or three weeks afterward, still not having tried it. That's OK; I'm so
Source: Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock
certain they will not try it initially, that I generally don’t even assign it
until I have been working with them for several weeks and have had
sufficient time to coach them into understanding (https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/empathy) the benefits of shifting their attention and
thinking; how it relates to brain functioning; and how it affects their mood, so that they understand the value of what I am asking them to do.

OK, so what is the exercise?

Keep a pad of paper next to your bed and every night before you go to sleep (https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/sleep), write down three
things you liked about yourself that day.

In the morning, read the list before you get out of bed.

Keep adding 3 new things to your list everyday to keep the list growing.

Do this everyday for 30 days.

These don’t have to be big things, like I am a kind person; they can be simple, such as I like that I held the door for my co­worker, or I like that I didn’t
lose my temper in traffic today, or I like that I am making the effort to try this exercise even if I’m not sure it will work...

For someone who is depressed, this activity feels like a lot of effort. Why? Research shows that people with depression
(https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/depression) have what is referred to as an attentional bias (https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/bias)
for negative self­relevant materials. They also have impaired attentional control, which means that once a negative schema is activated, they tend to
ruminate on it and have difficulty disengaging and shifting their attention to something else; consequently, there is sustained negative affect.(1)
Essentially, people with depression generally spend a good deal of time thinking about what they don’t like about themselves—and they have a hard
time stopping.

The more time you spend thinking about something, the more active it becomes in your mental space—and the easier it becomes to access. Also,
the more you think of something, the more it primes your brain to keep looking for similar things in your environment
(https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/environment), creating a selective filter that not only causes you to sift your environment for things that
match up with what you are thinking about, it actually causes you to distort ambiguous information in a way that matches up with your dominant
thoughts.

Someone with depression who goes to a party might get 10 compliments, but if one person mentions the shirt he is wearing is “interesting,” that
person may likely go home and fixate on the ambiguous comment and turn it into a stream of thinking like this: I wonder what was wrong with my

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5/27/2017 One Exercise Sure to Make You Feel Better About Yourself | Psychology Today
shirt, I probably looked silly in it, I bet they all thought I looked like an idiot. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I ever get anything right? This is so
humiliating. The 10 compliments have long been forgotten.

So how will this exercise help you?

Home Find a Therapist Topics Get Help Magazine Tests Experts (2) 

Research also shows that it requires more attentional effort to disengage from a negative thought process than a neutral one.  This simple­to­do but
nonetheless effortful exercise essentially helps you build the strength to disengage from any negative thought stream; redirects your attention to
positive aspects of yourself; and retrains your selective attention bias.

As you do this, you not only start to become aware of more of your positive attributes, they become more available to you as you interpret events
around you. Compliments become something you can hear and accept because they are more congruent with your new view of yourself. You start to
interpret events occurring around you in a less self­critical way. If you stick with it, over time this has a compounding effect that elevates your overall
sense of self­worth (https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/self­esteem)—and, subsequently, your well­being.

But remember: There is no benefit to your mental health (https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/health) in just understanding how the exercise
works, just as there is no benefit to your physical health in knowing how to use a treadmill. The benefit comes from the doing.

Want to know if this exercise really works? Read one Psychology Today reader's experience trying it.
(https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/living­forward/201603/can­one­simple­exercise­really­improve­your­self­esteem)

1. Rudi De Raedt, Lemke Leyman, Evi De Lissnyder. (2010). Mood­congruent attention and memory (https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/memory) bias in dysphoria: Exploring

the coherence among information­here. Behaviour Research and Therapy (https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/therapy), 48 (3), 219–225

2. Marie­Anne Vanderhasselt, Simone Kühn, Rudi De Raedt (http://link.springer.com/search?facet­author=%22Rudi+De+Raedt%22). (2011). Healthy brooders employ more

attentional resources when disengaging from the negative: an event­related fMRI study. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience

(https://www.psychologytoday.com/basics/neuroscience), 11(2), 207­216

Jennice Vilhauer, PhD is the author of Think Forward to Thrive
(http://www.amazon.com/Think­Forward­Thrive­Anticipation­
Transcend/dp/1608682986/ref=sr_1_1?
ie=UTF8&qid=1421509525&sr=8­1&keywords=Think+FOrward): How
to Use the Mind's Power of Anticipation to Transcend Your Past and
Transform Your Life, and the developer of Future Directed Therapy.
(http://www.FutureDirectedTherapy.com)

To view my 2015 TEDx talk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=FwLeiY5f7sI) on Why You Don't Get What You Want click here
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwLeiY5f7sI).

Be sure to read the following responses to this post by our bloggers:

Source: New World Library

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5/27/2017 One Exercise Sure to Make You Feel Better About Yourself | Psychology Today

Can One Simple Exercise Really Improve Your Self­Esteem? (/blog/living­forward/201603/can­one­simple­exercise­really­improve­your­self­esteem)
is a reply by Jennice Vilhauer Ph.D.

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Jennice Vilhauer, Ph.D., is the Director of Emory University’s Adult Outpatient Psychotherapy Program in the Department
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In Print:  Think Forward to Thrive: How to Use the Mind's Power of Anticipation to Transcend Your Past and Transform
Your Life (Future Directed Therapy) (https://www.amazon.com/Think­Forward­Thrive­Anticipation­
Transcend/dp/1608682986?SubscriptionId=AKIAIRKJRCRZW3TANMSA&tag=psychologytod­
20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=1608682986)
Online:  Future Directed Therapy (http://www.FutureDirectedTherapy.com)

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