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Giant Brain Candy: Imagine It Never Happened. People who wrote about how a good thing in their life might never have happened felt better than people who wrote about how it came to be, and those asked to predict it didn’t see it coming. Source: Mental subtraction.
Growing evidenceThe research
  1. Koo, M., Algoe, S. B., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). It’s a wonderful life: Mentally subtracting positive events improves people’s affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(5), 1217–1224.

Journey 5 · Gratitude

Imagine It Never Happened

People who wrote about how a good thing in their life might never have happened felt better than people who wrote about how it came to be, and those asked to predict it didn’t see it coming.

Source: Mental subtraction · Growing evidence

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