Vanity plates can do more than just make you smile.
Caroline Adams Miller, a performance coach from Bethesda, Md., says a vanity license plate can contribute to your success. She wrote Creating Your Best Life, an evidence-based book on how to set and accomplish goals and its intersection with happiness. She did copious research on “priming,” the many ways that something like a word, song, tattoo or a vanity license plate can lead to certain behaviors that help or hurt people purse their goals.
Miller, who holds a master’s degree in applied positive psychology, encourages her clients to invest in a vanity plate that reminds them of their values. Using priming words like “happy,” “nice,” “blessed” and “beloved” on a plate can inspire a positive attitude and self-esteem.
“The moments you spend being ‘primed’ to think or act a certain way can lead you in certain directions,” she says.
Miller has become such a vanity plate devotee that she refers to herself as “the license plate lady” and is always on the prowl for uplifting vanity plates she can add to her list.
Her own plate, WEHVFUN, encourages her to not take herself too seriously. “I remind myself to be happy because all success in life is preceded by being happy first,” she says.
