We all have good days and bad days- however, its those in between feelings that usually control our week by week morale and attitude. Commonly, Americans use food, pastimes, and family as pick me ups to uplift and raise spirits. Scientific research has found that nature’s best remedy for motivation and a morale boost is flowers.
As human beings, it is impossible to be happy all the time. It’s normal to have emotions that make you feel mad and sad. While you don’t want to stay stuck in the dumps, feeling emotions like anger and sadness is healthy.
But there is another way to transform negative feelings into happiness that is usually overlooked and under utilized, but has the ability to turn your mood around in mere minutes.
Want to feel more loved and appreciated?
The best way to feel loved and appreciated is to show those actions to someone else. Walk up to a person and sincerely tell them how much you appreciate them. Friends and family a like truly enjoy a nice compliment and gesture. The feelings and kind sentiments will carry over and reflect back upon you.
Need some compassion and kindness?
Pick up the phone and call a friend you know is having a hard time and offer your love and support. The kindness will become infectious and touch you too, and your happiness levels will elevate.
Could use inspiration or hope that things will get better?
Check in with another person about their life. Be honestly curious. Let your mind fill with their story so it can stop obsessing about what’s wrong with your life.
This approach to your happiness is a form of ‘paying it forward.’ Instead of wallowing in your sadness, you pick yourself up, and get interested in someone other than yourself and the story your mind is running. You choose to give happiness and love out to someone else, even though you are having a hard time. And based on the laws of reciprocity, you are way more likely to elevate your own feelings in return.
The reason this approach works is because it interrupts the stories and thoughts running through your mind that keep you stuck in lower vibration emotions. When you feel down, your mind becomes obsessed with creating stories to collaborate just how bad your situation is. It looks for evidence to back up the emotions you are feeling. So the loop continues until you take control of your mind and start playing a different tune. Turning your focus from obsessing about your problems to helping, caring for, and listening to someone else is like injecting love and kindness into your brain and body – plus you can really have a positive impact on someone else.
I shared above three ways to turn your frown around, and I have a bonus one that I myself love to use. Instead of ‘Pay It Forward’ it’s called “Petal it Forward.”
Westchester Flower Shop and Mr. Bokay’s Petal It Forward Movement
Get yourself a bunch of stems of flowers and give two flowers to as many people as you like, giving them a wish and a request. Your wish for them is something like, “May your day be full of love and happiness” and your request is for them to take the other flower and pass the wish and the flower on to another person – “petaling” it forward. The daring part? That the people to whom you pay the happiness forward are not your close relatives or friends, but rather strangers, people at work, or people who serve you every day anonymously (like the barista or your dry cleaner).
The reason this works so well, even with people you don’t know, is that the power comes from the flower itself. Common sense tells us that flowers make people feel better. Scientific studies done at Rutgers University have proven that receiving flowers elevates moods, creates connection and, in essence, makes us happier.
Excepts from Source: AboutFlowers Blog