Sep 11, 2012

Writing and happiness

I recently read a couple of papers that go further along the lines of happiness becoming an emperical science. Specifically, how writing affects well-being.

Those who write know that it makes them happy. They know they will get cranky if they don’t. Just like athletes missing a training session. Now here is some emperical evidence along those lines.

• those who regularly wrote expressively before an exam had higher scores and lesser pre-exam depression. ¹
• writing about your worst experiences improves your mental and physical health. The flip side was that writing and analyzing positive experiences descreased overall life satisfaction. In other words, face and work through the bad stuff, accept and don’t overthink the good stuff. ²