Improve Your Happiness in Bed

If you want to get better at something, including being happier, you have to practice. Happiness "doesn’t come naturally to us,” suggests Richard O’Connor, psychotherapist and author of Happy At Last: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Finding Joy. “We’re wired to be alert and competitive and sort of on the prowl.”

A good way to practice being happier, recommends O’Connor, is to go to bed at night thinking about three good things that happened to you during the day—for example, a great dinner with your spouse, an accomplishment at work, or simply feeling safe, warm and relaxed in bed. “The research shows that this helps you wake up in a better mood the next morning,” he says. “And as long as you keep doing it, your mood increasingly gets better and better.”

For more advice on being happier, listen to the rest of my Change Nation interview with Richard O’Connor here.