A big part of happiness is knowing who you are. Knowing yourself allows you to know whether you are positively, negatively, or neutrally primed. I’m not talking about optimism or pessimism. I’m talking about our ability to bounce back and let go.

People who are negatively primed have a difficulty bouncing back and will tend to hold onto things that do not serve them.

People who are positively primed can struggle with moving on too soon and letting go too quickly of things that matter.

People who are neutrally primed get stuck and often question how useful the things they’ve held onto are.

One way to determine how you are primed is by sentence completion exercises. This month, the happiness blog will feature guidance for four different sentence completion exercises. This week’s sentence completion exercise is to complete the sentence, “I am…”

How you complete this sentence over the course of seven days will reflect how you are primed. How you perceive this exercise will also reveal how you are primed. People who are negatively primed typically perceive this to be about listing negative attributes, things to be worked on, or areas of improvement. Positively primed people usually perceive this as an exercise in celebrating their positive qualities and their bright spots. Neutrally primed people generally view this exercise as a means to determine how things are going.

The exercise is all of the above. It is open-ended to allow you to determine how best to use it. It can be used to create focused self-improvement. If can be used as a celebration of self. It can also be used as self-check to see how things are going. I recommend blending the three. For the first three days, check in and evaluate your attributes. Assess what adjectives come to mind. How are you primed? The next two days, complete the sentence with an attribute you would like to change. The final two days, celebrate what is awesome about you and complete the statement positively.