Negative Knock Out!

Here’s something inspired by positive psychology’s latest mobile app, Happify. The objective of the game is to knock over all the negative triggers that tend to eat us up and to let the participant release steam while they’re at it. 

Here we’ve labeled 7 tin foil trays with “relationship problems”, “worry”, “anger”, “chismis” (Filipino for gossip), “bad calls” (unique to the audience we created this for), “stress”, and “that one thing you ‘hate’ the most”. Participants are given 20 seconds to knock down these negative sources. 

What I enjoyed the most about this activity was seeing how the audience approached it. The words act as their stimuli that produce a train of memories related to any of the words above, this in turn triggers anger and frustration in them that they take much pride in knocking down. Without explanation I observed that  participants would respond with excitement as if ready to address what has been pent up inside them. 

This game,like many on happify, is meant to acknowledge what hurts and weighs us down. And as adults, it is very important that we find creative ways to let this out. Sometimes we don’t necessarily need a therapist to talk this through with, but we can be creative in making various activities therapeutic. 

Feeling a little burned out? Take a few tools and start your own negative knock out. Who knows! You may come up with something worth sharing.