Positive Actions Cards
Integrate new positive habits into your daily life!
Strengthen your well-being skills and develop your psychological potential using Positive Action Cards, which incorporate validated and evidence-based positive psychology interventions.
Organized into seven categories around the acronym ACTIONS (Activity, Understanding, Tranquility, Identity, Optimism, Us, and Satisfaction), these engaging and informative cards provide detailed suggestions on how to develop new positive habits in your life.
The Positive Action Cards were designed as a support tool for any coach, psychologist, or training professional. They can also be used by anyone without any prior knowledge.
Discover 7 free practices to give you a concrete idea of positive action cards by clicking here .
Product Description
Over the past few years, the notion of a “positive psychology intervention” (or PPI) has risen to prominence, as it was discovered that certain intentional actions can be effective in increasing and sustaining happiness and other positive states, as well as in reducing depression and anxiety.
A good definition of what constitutes a positive intervention is “treatment methods or intentional activities aimed at cultivating positive feelings, positive behaviours, or positive cognitions” (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009, p. 467).
How do we know what works and what doesn’t? What is effective, and what is less so? Here is where the science comes in! Positive interventions come tested through Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs). RCTs involve the random allocation of participants to two or more groups and comparing the proposed intervention with another exercise intended as a placebo.
All of the actions in the set have been tested through RCTs AND have appeared in one or more meta-analyses. Considered the gold standard of applied research, a meta-analysis evaluates the overall impact of a group of interventions on our functioning.
The 64 intervention cards are organised into seven categories, which form the ACTIONS acronym.1)
A = Active interventions; concerned with sport and physical activity.
C = Calming actions; concerned with mindfulness and meditation.
T = Thinking or taking stock; working through and integrating past events, whether negative or positive, into our present situation.
I = Identity related actions; concerned with personal strengths and one’s representation of oneself.
O = Optimisation actions; that enable you to set goals, look to the future, and to potentially improve the current situation.
N = Nourishing actions; concerned with self-soothing, pleasure and taking care of yourself.
S = Social actions; to do with establishing and maintaining positive relationships.
Who is it for?
While anyone can use this tool to improve their own well-being, Positive Action Cards are a treasure trove for any coach or training professional. Too many positive psychology interventions rely primarily on cognitive processes, leaving clients with very few ways to truly explore well-being. This can also lead to difficult group dynamics, where the conclusions of a session are abstract and difficult to retain. Positive Action Cards allow you to introduce, test, and vary your interventions, resulting in greater engagement and a greater likelihood of continued use.
“Positive Action Cards capture the excellence of evidence-based positive psychology interventions to provide practitioners with an innovative platform to showcase their distinctiveness and create positive actions with and for their clients. A remarkable set of tools that raises the bar for positive psychology coaching practice.” Dr. Aneta Tunariu – Head of the School of Psychology, University of East London
Its use
You can start with our article which invites you to practice 7 positive actions to strengthen your resilience on a daily basis.
Here are some more ideas to help you get started with the full game. These activities are written with the end user in mind, so if you are a coach, trainer, or therapist, please note that by “you,” we could also mean “your client.”
* Action laboratory
Alone or with a friend or coach, examine the set of cards and identify the actions you are currently using or have tried in the past. What did they do to you/how did they make you feel? Have you noticed any changes in yourself as a result of implementing them? If so, what were they? Would you like to continue or start using any of these actions again? If so, which ones, why, and how?
* What is the best fit?
Look at the cards, select the action that seems most natural to you, another (or the same) one that seems most interesting to you, and another (or the same) one that seems most important to you. How many cards do you have? One, two, or three? This action, or these actions, are probably the ones that best match your personality. On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to try this or these actions?
* A small step towards happiness
Although many of us dream of making radical changes to our lives, these are often doomed to failure. It's much more reliable to start with very small changes. Select a new action from the pack and plan how you could realistically begin implementing it. Don't worry if you can't follow the instructions or timetables exactly. Instead, think about what you are capable of doing and the very first step you can take to integrate a new habit into your life.
* Well-being at work
Use these cards during any training, coaching, or team-building session. First, ask each group member to share their usual ways of taking care of their well-being, before working together to develop a team-wide action plan.
Discover the Positive Action Cards and use them in our Module 1 on Positive Foundations and find your activities to regulate your emotions in Module 2 on Emotional Enterprise of the Expert Practitioner Course in Positive Psychology at Work.
Over the past few years, the notion of a “positive psychology intervention” (or PPI) has risen to prominence, as it was discovered that certain intentional actions can be effective in increasing and sustaining happiness and other positive states, as well as in reducing depression and anxiety.
A good definition of what constitutes a positive intervention is “treatment methods or intentional activities aimed at cultivating positive feelings, positive behaviours, or positive cognitions” (Sin & Lyubomirsky, 2009, p. 467).
How do we know what works and what doesn’t? What is effective, and what is less so? Here is where the science comes in! Positive interventions come tested through Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs). RCTs involve the random allocation of participants to two or more groups and comparing the proposed intervention with another exercise intended as a placebo.
All of the actions in the set have been tested through RCTs AND have appeared in one or more meta-analyses. Considered the gold standard of applied research, a meta-analysis evaluates the overall impact of a group of interventions on our functioning.
The 64 intervention cards are organised into seven categories, which form the ACTIONS acronym.1)
A = Active interventions; concerned with sport and physical activity.
C = Calming actions; concerned with mindfulness and meditation.
T = Thinking or taking stock; working through and integrating past events, whether negative or positive, into our present situation.
I = Identity related actions; concerned with personal strengths and one’s representation of oneself.
O = Optimisation actions; that enable you to set goals, look to the future, and to potentially improve the current situation.
N = Nourishing actions; concerned with self-soothing, pleasure and taking care of yourself.
S = Social actions; to do with establishing and maintaining positive relationships.
While anyone can use this tool to improve their own well-being, Positive Action Cards are a treasure trove for any coach or training professional. Too many positive psychology interventions rely primarily on cognitive processes, leaving clients with very few ways to truly explore well-being. This can also lead to difficult group dynamics, where the conclusions of a session are abstract and difficult to retain. Positive Action Cards allow you to introduce, test, and vary your interventions, resulting in greater engagement and a greater likelihood of continued use.
“Positive Action Cards capture the excellence of evidence-based positive psychology interventions to provide practitioners with an innovative platform to showcase their distinctiveness and create positive actions with and for their clients. A remarkable set of tools that raises the bar for positive psychology coaching practice.” Dr. Aneta Tunariu – Head of the School of Psychology, University of East London
You can start with our article which invites you to practice 7 positive actions to strengthen your resilience on a daily basis.
Here are some more ideas to help you get started with the full game. These activities are written with the end user in mind, so if you are a coach, trainer, or therapist, please note that by “you,” we could also mean “your client.”
* Action laboratory
Alone or with a friend or coach, examine the set of cards and identify the actions you are currently using or have tried in the past. What did they do to you/how did they make you feel? Have you noticed any changes in yourself as a result of implementing them? If so, what were they? Would you like to continue or start using any of these actions again? If so, which ones, why, and how?
* What is the best fit?
Look at the cards, select the action that seems most natural to you, another (or the same) one that seems most interesting to you, and another (or the same) one that seems most important to you. How many cards do you have? One, two, or three? This action, or these actions, are probably the ones that best match your personality. On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to try this or these actions?
* A small step towards happiness
Although many of us dream of making radical changes to our lives, these are often doomed to failure. It's much more reliable to start with very small changes. Select a new action from the pack and plan how you could realistically begin implementing it. Don't worry if you can't follow the instructions or timetables exactly. Instead, think about what you are capable of doing and the very first step you can take to integrate a new habit into your life.
* Well-being at work
Use these cards during any training, coaching, or team-building session. First, ask each group member to share their usual ways of taking care of their well-being, before working together to develop a team-wide action plan.
Discover the Positive Action Cards and use them in our Module 1 on Positive Foundations and find your activities to regulate your emotions in Module 2 on Emotional Enterprise of the Expert Practitioner Course in Positive Psychology at Work.
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