Improved Lives

“We should work to cultivate positive emotions in ourselves and in those around us not just as end states in themselves, but also as a means to achieving psychological growth and improved psychological and physical health over time.” - Barbara Fredrickson

Most of us think about positive emotions as an end goal. We see them as evidence that our self-improvement is working and is on the right track. What we need to realize is that positive emotions affect our minds and our bodies in both immediate and long term ways.

Most people are aware that when you smile, you can’t help but feel good. The act of smiling releases certain chemicals in the brain that just make you happier. And if you smile a lot, you’re going to be a happier person in the long term.

Positive emotions work just like smiling. Experiencing positive emotions can give you all kinds of benefits and can aid tremendously in personal growth. Here are a few examples.

The Immediate Benefits of Positive Emotions

• Joy benefits us by creating the urge to play, push the limits, and be creative.
• Interest benefits us by creating the urge to explore, take in new information and experiences, and expand the self in the process.
• Contentment benefits us by creating the urge to savor current life circumstances and integrate these circumstances into new views of the self and of the world.
• Pride, a positive emotion that follows achievements, benefits us by creating the urge to share news of the achievement with others and to envision even greater achievements in the future.
• Love experienced within contexts of safe, close relationships benefits us by creating recurring cycles of urges to play with, explore, and savor experiences with loved ones.

These are just a few examples, but the same is true for any emotion, even the negative ones. Negative emotions lead to negative actions that cause you to shy away from the world and new experiences, and positive emotions lead to positive actions and cause you to broaden and expand your world.

This means you should go out and seek situations that will give you positive emotions, and avoid things and situations that will cause negative emotions. We are all the products of our environments. Surround yourself with positive people, activities, and places, and you can’t help but be a more positive person.

Things you can do to Increase the Positivity in your Life:

• Find Positive Friends - This was probably THE best thing I did for my own personal growth.
• Find Positive Media - Try to seek out TV shows and movies that make you laugh and inspire you.
• Find Positive Reading - I love to read, and comedies are some of my favorite books.
• Find Positive Places - Your environment has a lot of influence on you. Try to spend time in places that make you happy like a favorite walking trail, a sun-room, or even a garden.
• Find Positive Activities - Whether it’s sports, reading, cooking, gardening, spending time with the kids, if it makes you happy, do more of it.
• Eliminate the Negative - You should highlight the positive and eliminate the negative. Identify the things in your life that spawn negative emotions and cut them out, or change them around so that they become positives.

Through experiences of positive emotions people transform themselves, becoming more creative, knowledgeable, resilient, socially integrated, and healthy individuals. - Barbara Fredrickson

Further Reading:
- The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology by Barbara Fredrickson (pdf)

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