Are you looking for the key to a happier life? Good news: there’s an app for that. Read on for a round-up of six apps that draw on psychological principles to boost your well-being and help set you on the path to a healthier, happier life.
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Headspace
Numerous studies have shown that mindfulness techniques, including meditation, can offer significant mental, emotional, and physical benefits. These benefits include reducing your stress, improving your focus and attention, and even helping you sleep better.
If you’re looking to incorporate some of these techniques into your life, Headspace provides an excellent introduction. This beautifully-designed guided meditation app helps familiarize beginners with the basics of meditation through a series of brief videos, and offers users a choice of 10 different short guided meditations.
Try them all – or pick your favorite and stick with it. And don’t be concerned that you’ll have to spend a lot of time sitting cross-legged on the floor with your eyes closed. As little as 10 minutes a day of focused meditation can yield benefits.
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Dream:ON
If what you dream about at night is having a negative impact on you during the day, Dream:ON is the app for you. This free “dream control” app lets you track and monitor your sleep cycle throughout the night (based on your level of movement). It also plays a soundscape of your choice at key moments while you’re asleep. The idea is that as your brain registers the sound, your dreams will be influenced by whatever you’re hearing.
There are over 40 “dream themes” from which to choose, from the sounds of a peaceful garden or a relaxing rainforest to a pool party or a ride on a space shuttle. The app can also wake you during the optimum part of your sleep cycle, so that you feel well-rested and refreshed rather than groggy and reluctant to get out of bed. Finally, if you’re scientifically-minded, you can choose to share your sleep data with the researchers behind Dream:ON to help build their knowledge of the science of dreams.
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Live Happy
If you want to live a happier life, why not choose an app that has “happy” right in its name? Informed by positive psychology, the Live Happy app prompts you to perform tasks or engage in activities that have been scientifically proven to improve your mood. These include setting attainable goals, visualizing your best possible self, and taking time to savor the present moment. A useful app for helping demonstrate that happiness isn’t just a feeling, it’s an activity that you can learn and practice.
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Thought Diary Pro
For many people, one of the biggest barriers to happiness is getting caught in a spiral of negative thinking that they just can’t seem to shake. In response to this, Thought Diary Pro draws on the principles of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy – which holds that the way we think is what determines both how we feel and how we behave – to help you learn to combat unhelpful thought patterns.
Essentially a thought diary where you can record what you’re thinking, the app helps you keep track of your negative thoughts and allows you to spot the biases and patterns behind them. Once you’re aware of these biases, you’re in a better position to generate positive thought alternatives and thus modify your mood and your behavior.
Thought Diary Pro can certainly be for personal and private use only. However, it also includes a helpful feature that allows users who see mental health professionals to e-mail their thought diary notes directly to their therapists or care providers.
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Way of Life
Studies have shown that pursuing attainable goals (and achieving them, naturally) is one of the biggest sources of happiness there is. Way of Life helps make this easier by allowing you to select simple personal goals and track your progress through motivational graphs and charts and numerous daily reminders.
While there are no restrictions on the type of goals you can select, this app works particularly well when applied to habits. It can help people who are starting new good habits or kicking old bad habits, whether those goals are related to exercise, healthy eating, sleeping well, or quitting smoking.
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My Mood Tracker
If you’re finding it hard to pinpoint what’s making you unhappy in your life, My Mood Tracker can help. Operating on the principle that you can’t improve something until you measure it, the app helps you understand what’s behind your emotional changes. It does so by tracking not only your mood throughout the day, but also a host of other details.
These details include sleep patterns, nutrition, exercise habits, medication, activities, and location (some of these can be collected automatically, other details are entered manually). Correlating these fields can give you important insight about specific things you’re doing or places you’re going that might be negatively impacting your mood and your emotional state.