Your mobile can help you think positive

When you feel that you are getting stressed, all it may take is a click on your mobile to snap out of it. Happify is perhaps the most sophisticated positive vibes app available now. 

The idea of this free iOS app is to train you into thinking positively and feeling happy by engaging you in various “tracks” with different goals like improving your confidence or seeing new possibilities. By playing through games and activities for a few minutes each day, the aim is to ultimately get into the habit of thinking positively.

Happify, which claims its technique is based on science, starts by asking you some thought-provoking questions about your life and your goals in using the app. Then it recommends some tracks for you, and within a few taps you’ve begun.

Each track contains bite-size quizzes, games and activities that guide you to seeing more positive aspects of your daily life. For example, one may ask you to list things you’re grateful for at home, another will get you to notice positive words in a game where you lose points by clicking on negative words.

The app also regularly helps you assess your happiness level, that way pointing out how you can feel more positive merely by changing your habits. There’s also a community page in the app where you can see inspirational comments by other users and even upload your own - though you don’t have to use this page.

The app is fun and definitely draws my attention to the happier side of life. Perhaps Happify’s only drawback is that while it’s free to download and use, access to its full range of activities costs $13 (Rs 795) a month or $70 (Rs 4,283) a year. It’s also only for iOS devices.

Other apps use a different route to developing positive thinking habits: repeated affirmation. These apps simply expose you repeatedly to motivational ideas, quotes and suggestions.

On iOS, Positive Thinking by TapCoder.com is a relatively simple attempt at this kind of app. It uses colourful imagery and very simple controls, and has a list of motivational quotes and suggestions - everything from “do sports” to “stop thinking ... sit there relaxed.” The app can even pop a motivational notification on your screen automatically at certain times if you choose. It’s extremely basic, and there’s not a huge amount of content, but you may find it has some good ideas and it is free.

On Android another app called Positive Thinking, this one by Juniper Islet, has a very similar goal, but offers extras like being able to add your own motivational quotes to its archive and to push quotes onto an Android widget so you can read them without opening the app. It’s also free. Another approach to thinking positively is to track your moods so you can either notice what makes you feel glum or simply be more aware of when you think positively.

The app iMoodJournal on iOS, which costs $2 (Rs 122), is sophisticated and has a great-looking, easy-to-use interface. Through a suite of menus and text-entry controls you can make a diary-style note in the app of when you’re feeling positive (or not), and also add a photo or a selfie.

When you’ve accumulated enough entries, the app presents some analytics in the form of graphs that show your positivity over time. This could help you plan strategies to be more positive.

The T2 Mood Tracker app is a rough equivalent on Android, and has a few neat extras like letting you enter your own parameters to measure on a sliding scale so you could add very specific sensations or events that are meaningful to your emotional state. It’s free, and is also available for iOS devices.

If you prefer a more meditative approach to positive thinking, check out Smiling Mind, a free iOS and Android app. You enter data on how you’re feeling, using a number of slide controls that ask if you’re feeling “stormy” or “calm,” for example. Then you listen to a meditationlike voice track that talks you through different programs.