Tag Archives: Positive
How to Manifest a Soul Mate – Just Be Happy and Positive
What kind of a question is this? Well it is actually a bit of a rhetorical question, because you manifest a soul mate the same way as you would manifest anything into your life, with positive affirmations and the absolute belief that you will find your soul mate.
One of the first steps to take in any kind of quest for what you want out of life is to be both grateful and happy for what you already have. An attitude of gratitude and being happy will always draw people and the things you want to you. One of the most profound truths in this universe is the laws of attraction. When we feel good and this is a choice that we have made and are committed to, things start to happen.
Feeling good about ourselves and the things we already have in our lives has a way of attracting even more to us. The universe acknowledges this and will happily respond to all our desires. Inner power is something that everything in the universe has, it is energy and everything is made up of it. The same applies to humans as applies to any hydrogen or carbon atom. The energy exists and strong mental focus will help it to manifest whatever it is you want out of life and if it is a soul mate, then a soul mate it is!
People who put an effort into the laws of attraction and see no results often give up believing that it doesn’t work. You have to make an effort to learn guides to the rules of the laws of attraction before you will manage to manifest anything and then, you can’t only concentrate of one aspect of your life, everything needs to be taken care of and everything has its place.
The more you concentrate on one thing and neglect the others, the less chance you have of succeeding. Learning only part of the principles of manifestation will not attract your hearts desires, just as not changing your diet won’t help with losing weight even if you are exercising more. You have to be prepared to look at this from a holistic aspect, taking everything into consideration.
Get more help to manifest a soul mate and discover how to make the law of attraction work for you.
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Positive Parenting Technique Number 1 – Speak Your Child’s Language
By learning to speak your child’s “language,” you begin to apply a powerful positive parenting technique that significantly improves both your relationship and influence with them.
Let’s explore two situations that can happen when you “speak” a different behavioral language than your child.
If you are fast paced and energetic and your child is not, they may seem to move and speak so slowly that it nearly drives you nuts.
Likewise, if you are more contemplative and slower paced and your child is fast and energetic, their energy, volume, and pace might exhaust and frustrate you.
If either of these situations describes your relationship with your child, the frustration and disconnect you feel may be because you and your child have completely different behavioral styles.
The examples above reference some common frustrations that happen when parents and children have different “motor” drives. A difference in motor drives between parent and child can create a pace, volume, and intensity mismatch between them that causes real stress and frustration in the relationship.
Another common difference can occur between “compass” drives. Some people are naturally very task-oriented. They tend to look at every situation as a task to accomplish. Other people are very people-oriented. They tend to evaluate every event based on how relationships are affected. Most people have a blend of these two perspectives, and will still tend to lean a bit more one way than the other.
Both perspectives are perfectly normal and natural. Neither one is better or worse than the other. However, when two people in a relationship have significantly different tendencies in this area, conflict can erupt.
For example, task oriented parents with people oriented children may come across as too harsh or rigid to their children. Similarly, people oriented parents with task oriented children may frustrate their children because they (the parents) act “too silly.”
The types of conflicts and misunderstandings that come from these differences are many and varied.
To minimize these conflicts and build a better relationship with your child, learn to understand and speak their behavioral “language.” The DISC model of human behavior is a powerful tool to help you develop this understanding and skill.
Study the model. Consider taking assessments so that you can objectively identify the differences and similarities you have with your child. If you will dig into understanding your child and speaking their language, you will be applying one of the most powerful positive parenting techniques at your disposal – the “technique” of love and understanding.
With his wife Sandra, Guy Harris co-created a positive parenting program called The Behavior Bucks System. Guy and Sandra Harris are both Human Behavioral Consultants and parents.
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Positive Thinking Tips For Achieving Your Desires Quickly
Positive thinking is the steady flow of thoughts and feelings in our mind that are conducive, inspiring and pleasant to our growth, happiness and good health in life. They are thoughts that give us hope and expectations of positive results. It’s also a condition of our mind that allows us to anticipate success, joy and development in our life.
On the contrary is negative thoughts. That’s thoughts, words or attitudes that produce unhappy expectations, actions or moods. When we entertain negative thoughts our mind produces poisonous substances into our body system, which causes more unhappiness, frustrations and disappointments. This is why negative thinking is fundamentally responsible to lack of progress, ill health and failure in our lives.
For each of us to attain high success and achieve all our desires quickly and easily, we need to maintain positive thinking consistently in our mind. The repetition of these thoughts is what will assist your sub-conscious mind to trigger your body system into positive mood. This will now send the positive aura to the universe to attract positive things .
In other to maintain a steady flow of positive thinking we have to constantly steer our mind away from negative thoughts. Some people have complained about some difficulties they experienced in maintaining steady flow of positive thinking. The following practical steps will assist them in this direction:
1. Immediately a negative thought enter your mind take cognizance of it and start immediately to erase it from your mind. Replace it with a positive thought. Bring to your mind immediately, the lofty goal you’ve prepared for yourself.
2. Constantly visualize the end result of your goal. Whether it’s a material thing like a house or a car, keep visualizing it. If it’s a position or attainment, keep seeing yourself as already in that position, and savoring the benefits and enjoyments of it.
3. Employ the use of affirmations. The continuous repetition of positive affirmations have assisted a great number of people. Prepare phrases well suited for your need and repeat them regularly. Be careful to say this phrases with belief and and positive expectations. Doing this will hasten your manifestations.
Did you know that it takes 9 months for an average person to achieve what he could easily have achieved with his mind in three weeks? Why waiting for that long. Visit http://positivenotions.com/intro.htm to find out how you could use your mind to achieve your desires quickly and easily.
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People Skills – Are You a Perpetually Positive Person?
I decided to start humming. Hummm…Hummm…Hummm… Hummm…Hummm…
This attracted a few weird looks. I wasn’t doing it very loud, just spreading a joyful noise and smiling like I knew something no one else knew…which I did. The person next to me smiled and nodded at me, and so did the person two people ahead in line. As a matter of fact, it seemed like everyone standing near me began to lighten up and become a bit cheerier.
Now this could have only been my imagination (it’s pretty active), and it could have just been the fact that in less than a minute, I changed my attitude, which made the whole situation seem different. But the end result was magic! The line seemed to move faster and I was now making others smile.
That day I was standing in what seemed like an endless line at my local retail store. I looked around and noticed that it seemed like we were all resigned to our waiting fate. The cashiers were trying to do their best, but there wasn’t a smile in the vicinity. No uplifted lips on the cashiers or the customers that were waiting. It was like one long line of resignation… until I started humming.
My point to all of this is “Why are we letting a situation determine our attitude?” Why is it that we will put up with humorless lines, rude people, long waits and endless seriousness when we could be putting a little more grace, happiness and joy into even the tiniest of daily tasks?
Maybe you do this already. BRAVO if you do! Is being a perpetually positive person part of your personality? (Whoa, the P thing got away from me!) If you’re one of those perpetually positive people…please stand in line by me, drive on my part of the highway, and please be the person on the other end of my phone line. I need you, and the whole world needs you!
If you aren’t inclined to be a PPP (Perpetually Positive Person) than maybe you can start now. Why? Because being positive does a whole lot of good for the world. But even more importantly, it does a whole lot of good for you. Being positive helps improve your health, makes your face wrinkle less, and lowers your body fat. (Okay, the body fat part was my wishful thinking). But it’s a proven fact that happier people live longer.
How can you go about becoming a Perpetually Positive Person (PPP)? I thought you’d never ask!
1. Wear that smile! Plaster it on your face the minute you wake up and don’t take it off until you go to bed. Even when you’re alone you should wear a smile. A wonderful expert in skin care and cosmetics suggested that a person earns their face. Meaning that as you age, your resting demeanor and how you think and behave on a continuous basis contributes to your facial lines. If you keep a smile or slight grin going you will age more gracefully, have a lot more friends, and fewer wrinkles to boot! I’m very serious about this. The power of a smile is underrated because all of us think we smile all the time, but in reality we don’t. So now is the time to turn up the corners of those lips!
2. Think happy thoughts! The challenge with this one is that we are bombarded daily with negative messages. Okay, so don’t read or listen to the news. Also think of the positive points of each and every situation. This is easier the more you practice it. One technique I have used successfully is to pray a happy prayer whenever I hear something bad. A war in the Middle East? Please God let those people work it out. Some teen set a cat on fire? I pray that the teen gets the help he or she needs, and I pray the cat hasn’t used up all nine of its lives. It’s not that I’m heartless; it’s that I know I can only change the world if I can keep myself from getting jaded and negative. I’m not in control of other people, and neither are you, but we are both in control of one very important thing, our own thoughts. Keep them happy and positive and we can change any situation.
3. Say “Please” & “Thank-you.” This is something that seems to have gone the way of white gloves. People and customers expect so much, but if we asked a little nicer and were a bit more grateful the world would be a much better place to do business. Wouldn’t you agree? Graciousness begins with you and me. I’ve found that from time to time we begin to lose these little niceties with our families. We no longer ask our spouse to get something, we demand it (in the nicest way I’m sure), or we tell our children to do something and expect them to comply without our demonstrating politeness. Often forgetting that whatever they do deserves recognition and thanks. Some people don’t say please and thank-you because they forget, some don’t say it because they think it weakens them, and some don’t say it from pure laziness. Whatever the reason, I know that none of us, even those that are pretty good at remembering to say please and thank-you say it enough. We can never be too polite when asking for things and never too grateful when receiving a request. Add these little words to the beginning and ending of most of your sentences and you’ll be surprised at how wonderful people begin to treat you!
You now have an opportunity to make a difference. I’ve given you three tips that when practiced regularly can be the start of an incredible change for you. I wish you a future filled with perpetually positive people!
If you want to attract more prospects, multiply loyal customers, and boost sales, this Schuh is a fit! Shawna Schuh is an extraordinary storyteller, who works with corporations and associations to develop environments that help people bring their best selves to the work they do. Shawna addresses any and all issues relating to people skills. Her presentations are humorous, overflowing with energy and packed with practical results driven information that will positively maximize profits. Take an action that will help you succeed and improve your people skills visit: http://shawnaschuh.com/Ultimate%20year2.php
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Why Positive Thinking Can Be a Bad Practice
When you say the way you think will inevitably yield you certain results you reinforce the idea that different thinking will yield different results. People in sales will often tell their sales force to think positive. But that only works for those who are feeling positive already. If you tell a person who is experiencing negative feelings to think positive you can immerse them deeper. When you feel better you evoke better feeling thoughts. Your thinking is pointed in a more lofty direction and that’s what you want for success, a greater sense of self esteem. Your coaching would be more effective if you could raise the level of their feelings to be better place than where they might be.
The only people you would say ‘think positive’ to, are people you feel are not thinking that way. You don’t tell everyone who doesn’t think negative to think differently. And what they hear when you keep reminding them to think positive is that they think negatively. So at a deeper level they are being reminded that they must be negative thinkers. It’s worse than that, every time you harp on the idea they try harder but every effort makes real what they are resisting.
If you think healthy thinking is indeed healthy for you, you do affirm one thing that is very important, that what you think matters. No doubt about it. However, that is all you are doing, you are making it real that what you think influences the outcomes in life, negative or not. A more dominant negative person, who may for the moment feel good about himself, can be pushed into re-igniting the negative beliefs about himself when he is reminded to think positive. And if he tries hard to think that way he further stirs his negative beliefs. In that state any bit of negative evidence life brings forth may continue to flame those emotions.
It’s just not as simple as telling someone to think differently. I have coached many young athletes and students and what is important for them is to have an understanding of both where thoughts come, and what causes them to come forth. When you are deeply worried the thoughts that come to you are not happy thoughts and when you have a feeling of happiness and joy the thoughts that come to you are a match. One needs to know his or her thinking is always preceded by the emotions and feelings which give rise to them. Always, always, and did I say, always.
You alter the conversation from negative to positive or from the undesired to the desired by deliberately choosing better feelings, to have better feeling thoughts. It’s quite true that you can not be experiencing deep worry and in a moment cause yourself to experience jubilation. But you can however, with the willingness to seek out a better feeling thought, a very small happier feeling thought; you can cause yourself to get there. Reach for a better feeling thought no matter how small and then reach further and then further. You will notice changes in the physical reality as you begin to build an ability to do this. You will be thinking ‘positive thoughts’. Moreover your ability to attract what you desire in your present activity is enhanced.
By intending to move from whatever the emotions you are experiencing to even a small improvement in your feeling about whatever your immediate concern is, will cause you to point yourself in a direction of no resistance and freedom. My youngest daughter is a waitress and she realizes that the happier she can be she seems to receive far better tips. You do better in school, at work, in your studies, in all areas of your life when you can live your life always choosing to be happy. You are recognized as a ‘positive person’.
When you catch yourself speaking something or thinking something you feel negative about, never add to it by making yourself wrong. Use it to make yourself stronger by quickly looking for something that feels better. Dom DeLuise recently passed away and Burt Reynolds said that Dom never had an unkind word to say about anyone. How wonderful an example is that? In my next article on this subject I will be suggest some things you could do when you are in a ‘negative’ mood and wish to get yourself out.
Leon Michael Cautillo, Author/Instructor
Come visit In Our Time and read ‘A Global Vision’. If you enjoy the poster please consider purchasing it for display. You are invited to discover more about the magnificent and great possibility for mankind. Here you can find what there is to focus on that lifts the world and all its people to greater levels of happiness and joy.
http://www.inourtime.com
Positive Attitude – It’s Essential For Us
For any person in this world a positive attitude is the most important asset to posses. It makes one life much easier. Life is much unexpected and more often than not, it doesn’t turn out the way we want it to. There will be many times in life when you go through hard times and problems. And this is the most challenging part of living our lives. Everyone can keep a positive attitude when his or her life is going good. But the real test of our attitude comes when we face challenges and obstacles in our life.
You should keep a positive attitude to handle the problems in your life and take the problems as a test for your character. By keeping it, you must try to learn from your every mistake and failure, instead of getting demoralized by them. You should feel encouraged to work better and harder to achieve your goals. You would not be able to see your failure as a motivation, if you do not keep your attitude positive, and would rather be extremely discouraged with it.
Even though the situation of two people can be same but they may get extremely contrasting results only because of their mindsets. If we look at it this way; each one of us has been provided the same amount of time by God. Everyone’s day is of twenty four hours. Therefore, instead of wasting your time and energy in thinking about negative stuff, you should spend your days with a positive attitude. You must understand that life is already filled with disappointments and problems. Therefore, you should invest your time in thinking positively.
Because having a positive view towards life makes us happy. Studies have proved these people are healthier and also live longer than people with negative attitude. Happiness and positive thinking is contagious. It has been observed that people with a positive outlook have more friends because they appear to be more attractive to have as company. If you are with a person who has a positive attitude then you will also start feeling happier and more positive towards life.
Finally, We can say that a positive outlook towards life makes things much easier. It also motivates us to work towards our goals as positive thinking gives us the confidence that we can achieve anything we want.
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How Can I Keep A Positive Attitude At Work? 6 Tips To Keep Your Head High
How are you supposed to keep a positive attitude at work when Jim always tells you that he knows how to do it better than you and your boss always catches you daydreaming even though you only do it one time a day! Your coworkers are full of negativity and despair and it’s hard to keep your head up after talking to them and you keep getting work piled on you that you don’t really have time for in your schedule.
Work should be a place that you go to, do a job, and make some money but instead it sometimes can be the most negative place of your day that you have a hard time getting through and no longer look forward going to.
So how can you stay positive at your work?
1. Change Jobs – First and foremost if you are unhappy with your job and you don’t enjoy the tasks that you are given each day to do then you have to change jobs for your sanity. You can lie to yourself and say that you enjoy what you are doing even when you don’t but that will only get you through so many days of the work week.
Remember this. There are many people who stay in their jobs out of fear of not being able to get another one and they live their life complaining and unhappy when they could have just took a shot at a new job and spent their life doing what they loved.
2. Get Your Sleep – If you get the right amount of sleep every night then this will allow you to have more energy to deal with problems effectively throughout the day like finishing extra work or running from that annoying co-worker.
3. Take Your Breaks – There are many people who work through their breaks thinking that they will get more done in the work day but the truth is the quality of your work is suffering from this and your stress level is also suffering.
You have to take a few minutes to let your mind think about something other than work to be at your most productive self throughout the day and you will become frustrated very easily if you don’t. Even after a 10 minute break you will find yourself more productive.
4. Eat a Healthy Lunch – Do not opt in for processed or fried foods for lunch and do not overeat during lunch or your work will pay for it after lunch. When we overeat or eat unhealthy food our bodies use tons of energy to digest this mess of food, which means the energy that should be going towards work will be busy and you will not be that productive and you will feel negative about your days progress and possibly having to be there.
5. Do Not Join In The Misery – It can be hard not to get caught up in the complaining and negativity that your co-workers put out but if you want to have a better outlook about your job then you need to put a stop to it and no longer let other people drag you down.
If everyone else is complaining about the meeting that is going to soak up all of your work day then you can be the one that talks about how the meeting is going to teach you things to make your job easier or better and you are looking forward to it. If you don’t think that talking about it will do anything then at least avoid the talk and think the positive thoughts for yourself. The truth is when most people are in a land of negativity they can’t see the positive side of things and won’t engage in that kind of talk anywase.
6. Do Not Let Your Coworkers Bully You – There is so much bullying going on in today’s workplace that it’s almost as if high school has taken over everywhere.
There are the people who think they are better than you and let you know it at every turn. There are the clicks that talk about you while you walk by or behind your back. There is the boss that makes you feel as though you are worthless and not able to do your job properly. There are so many people at work that want to bring you down to their level of misery and they can be hard if not impossible to avoid.
The thing is you have to fix the problem or you will suffer through your days and drag it home after work with you and make yourself even more unhappy.
Either stand up for yourself and tell them directly that they can’t treat you like this or talk to someone higher up than them. Sometimes you boss may be the one bullying you and in that case you have to go over their head.
Whatever you do, do not be afraid of the outcome as you don’t deserve to spend your time being bullied anywhere, let alone a place you are trying to do a job.
Kari is the owner of Manifest Connection, a self help website geared towards making your life happier and healthier and achieving goals.
Secrets to Get happiness and positive change in your life
Degree of your happiness level is like yo yo. Sometimes it’s up, but other times it’s down. Many things might give you temporary joy or positive emotions. However, after a while, you come back to baseline or lower. This article will give a solution by using the scientifically proven techniques to create lasting happiness and positive change in your life.
Positive psychology is the scientific study of optimal human functioning. Traditional psychology focused on fixing what was wrong with people. Positive psychology uses the scientific method to understand what is right with human beings and how to help the average person become happier and more fulfilled. In this article, I describe an important study conducted by the worlds eminent positive psychologists and how you can use this research to improve the quality of your life. It is important however to note that according to Dr. Martin Seligman, the founder of the field, positive psychology is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive science.
That is, researchers conduct studies on concepts prescribed in self-help, pop psychology, religion and of course, wisdom passed on from grandmas. Researchers do not prescribe writing a gratitude letter to someone. Instead, they run rigorous studies on the concept then report what they have found and how it works. This is a subtle and important distinction. My approach as a positive psychology based life coach, speaker and teacher is a bridge between the prescriptive and descriptive. I call it invitational. In this article, I share the research and invite you to try some of these scientifically proven happiness activities yourself. If the activity fits, wear it. If it does not, try another one on. One size does not fit all.
In 2005 researchers Martin E. P. Seligman, Tracy A. Steen, Nansook Park and Christopher Peterson published an article in American Psychologist, a peer reviewed academic publication, titled Empirical Validation of Interventions. This was an internet based study that with 411 participants across 6 interventions, or happiness building activities, over the course of one week. The activities included: writing down three blessings everyday, paying a gratitude visit, discovering your strengths, finding new ways to use your strengths and writing about yourself at your best. They were compared to a control group that wrote about their childhood experiences. All of these groups had their subjective happiness and depression levels measured, before the activity, immediately after and as far as six months after
All of these activities had a positive effect on increasing happiness and decreasing depression. The gratitude visit and writing about you-at-your-best worked immediately after the activity. However, by 6 months, the effects wore off. Writing about 3 blessings and using strengths in a new way also increased happiness and decreased depression. These effects lasted as far as 6 months later. Identifying one’s strengths only produced a moderate, short-term decrease in depression. A factor that influenced the lasting effect was that many people spontaneously continued doing the activities after the initial assignment.I know what you might be thinking. “Well duh Emilya! If I write about what I’m grateful for and use my strengths I’ll be happier. Does that really take 5 of the most eminent psychologists today to figure that out?”
In a way it did. For a while, psychologists believed in happiness set points- or that your happiness level is predetermined and trying to become happier is futile. This research proves that with concerted effort at well-crafted activities, you can significantly improve your happiness level. An interesting point about this study is that the control group, which wrote about early childhood memories, experienced a significant increase in their happiness level and decrease in their depression levels immediately after the intervention. These rates returned to baseline after a few months. This hints at the power of our own suggestibility.
The participants knew that the study they were participating in related somehow to happiness. They assumed it would have a positive benefit and it did. However, just like fad diets, the unhappiness comes back. We live in age where researchers are conducting studies on the positive side of the human experience. Simultaneously we live in a world where time is a hot commodity. If you plan to devote 15-30 minutes a day to increasing your happiness level, you want the highest return on your investment possible. I invite you to capitalize on the research by trying out activities that are proven to work, particularly if those activities align with your values and motivations.
Here are 3 invitations:
Discover and use your top strengths: There are many ways to go about doing this. The easiest is to ask yourself, “What do I do well?” Note that a strength, such as creativity, is different than a talent, such as being a good artist. Go to http://viacharacter.org/VIAClassification/tabid/56/Default.aspx to read about 24 well researched strengths and ask yourself which strengths resonate with me. You can take an online questionnaire at www.viacharacter.org to discover your top strengths. Once you know your strengths, use them. Recognize when they naturally come up throughout the day and find unique ways of approaching them. Online publications, such as “340 Ways to Use Your Signature Strengths” by Tayyab Rashid, PhD, exist to help in the creative process.
Cultivate an attitude of gratitude: Express gratitude in a way that is authentic for you. Some choose to keep a gratitude journal, others think about their daily blessings before they go to bed. In the aforementioned study, participants on wrote down 3 good things a day and experienced the benefits. As you write, reflect on ways that you have contributed to these positive things happening and how you can get more of these blessings in your life. Pay a gratitude visit by seeking out someone who has positively impacted your life. Write a letter to them thanking them for their contributions. Laminate it. Personally deliver and read it to them. Try and catch them off guard.
Think back to a time when you were at your best: Perhaps a time when you were you felt fully engaged, alive and complete. What were you doing? Who were you with? How did others react to you? What made this so memorable for you? What strengths of yours were you using? How did others receive you? Write the experience down and then reread it for a few days. Put it up in place where
Is writing down 3 blessings a day the ticket to “Happily Ever After?” I do not think so. After all, “Happily Ever After” is subjective. However, objective research supports that incorporating more happiness building activities into your life can increase your happiness level. It is not what happens to you that affects how you feel, it is your reaction and interpretation of the situation. Our day-to-day happiness depends on our day to day actions and habits. Cultivating positive habits such as these activities hold strong potential to increase the quality of your life.
Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, MAPP, RYT, is an international life coach, speaker and founder of Flourish, Inc., an organization dedicated to enabling individuals and organizations in unleashing their potential using positive psychology, yoga and alternative therapies.
Thinking and Feeling Positive Is Good For Health
Emotions Have Evolutionary Value
People all understand that negative emotions have an evolutionary value as these emotions are associated with some kind of experience – fear, loss, and attack – that signals the activation of your flight or fight response. Aversion is a typical result you will have after experiencing negative emotions. Aversion is a feeling that activates and set you in motion to identify what is wrong and remove it. Negative emotions has a close relation with behaviors and actions that are associated with a sensory alert that activates us to focus on “fight, flight or conserve.”
Positive emotions also have an evolutionary advantage. They “broaden and build.” Experiencing the good feelings of positive emotions increases your survival chances because positive emotions broaden your intellectual, physical, and social resources and build reserves for you to draw upon.
The presence of good feelings increases your drive for exploration and discovery and provides the basis for positive social interactions. When you experience positive emotions, you become more tolerant, expansive, and creative and the more open to new ideas and new experiences you become.
Negative emotions narrow a person’s perspective to deal only with the immediate threat. When negative emotions are experienced, your flight or fight response is activated and you withdraw, freeze, or protect. In contrast, when you experience positive emotions, you feel safe and engage in active, playful exploration, and discovery. Negative emotions contract and positive emotions expand.
Good feelings form the experiential foundation for mentally healthy people in that they provide a foundation for growth and exploration and build the intellectual, social and physical capital for further growth and development.
When you experience negative emotions, they tell you to focus on what is wrong and eliminate it. When you experience positive emotions, however, you start looking for the virtues of what is happening. You become constructive, generous, un-defensive, and open to seeing possibilities.
Experiencing good feelings makes available an entirely different way of thinking from a negative mood. A negative mood helps us detect threats in our environment and focus our attention on protection. A positive mood moves us into growth and development, exploration and discovery.
The Three Principles of Positive Emotions
1. Positive Emotions Build Resources and Capital for the Future
The first principle of positive emotion is that good felings build the resources and capital that will become the basis for growth and development in years to come. When positive emotions are experienced you will reach outward and broaden your resources by exploration and discovery. You’ll be more creative, think quicker, and not succumb to premature closure or other forms of superficial intellectual processing.
Depressed people experience what is called a “downward spiral” of negative emotions. Depressed emotions call forth negative memories that feed more negative thoughts, that feed more negative memories, that feed more depressed emotions. Breaking this downward spiral is crucial to stopping the depression.
Psychologists have found what they call an upward spiral of positive emotion – different way of thinking and acting. The thinking becomes creative and broad-minded, and the actions become adventurous and exploratory. This increased creativity and exploration results in greater expansion.
As good felings produce expansion, more successful interactions in the environment produce more useful information about the environment and a sense of greater mastery. These successful interactions in the environment and the greater sense of mastery result in the generation of more positive emotions. These increased good felings result in more exploration, creativity and discovery in even more areas of life as the sense of mastery from the successful interactions ripples outward.
2. Positive Emotions Create an Upward Spiral
This upward and outward spiral of good felings leads to the second principle of positive emotions: Augment positive emotions in your life and start an upward and outward spiral of even more good felings and thus more exploration, discovery, creativity, and insightful thinking and more success and mastery in life.
3. Positive Emotions are Important
The third principle of positive emotions is that they need to be taken as seriously as negative emotions. Often negative emotions are taken more seriously because they have been believed to be the evolutionary backbone of human motivation. It was believed that people are motivated primarily to avoid experiencing negative emotions and that positive motivation was merely superficial.
Positive emotions are just as real, authentic, and important as negative emotions and equally important for evolutionary development, growth, and success in the world.
Positive Emotions Are Associated with More Successful Interactions in the World
Experiencing positive emotions brings more successful interactions with the world. Developing the art and skill of experiencing them will build more friendships, stronger love, better physical health, and more mastery and successful interactions in the world. Growth, positive development, and creative and successful interactions in the world (i.e. mental health) may have their foundations in the experience of positive emotions.
Happy People Are More Effective and Successful in the World
Happy people view themselves as more successful in the world. Happy people think that they have more skill than others think they do. Happy people remember more good events than actually happened and forget more of the bad events that happened Happy people see success as lasting, personal and pervasive and failure as impersonal, temporary and specific.
Happy people may lose a bit of realism but this does not lock them into ineffective functioning. Happy people are more likely to switch tactics when involved in a task that appears to be failing In the normal course of events, happy people rely on their tried and true positive past experiences while less happy people are more skeptical. However, when events are threatening, happy people, more readily than less happy people, switch tactics and adopt a skeptical and analytical frame of mind. Happy people seem to deal better with adversity.
Happier people are markedly more satisfied with their jobs than less happy people. More happiness actually causes more productivity and results in higher income. Happiness also makes gainful employment and higher income more likely. Adults and children who are put in a good mood select higher goals, perform better, and persist longer on a variety of laboratory tasks, such as solving anagrams.
Happy People Are Healthier
Positive emotions result in better physical health. Happy people spend more time playing. Playing has distinct survival benefits and is associated with greater creativity, muscle, and cardiovascular fitness. Good felings also predict health and longevity and protect people from the wear and tear of aging and strongly predict who lives longer, who dies earlier and who will become disabled. Happy people seek out and make use of more health risk information. Happy people have better health habits, lower blood pressure, and stronger immune systems than less happy people. They endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions when threatened. Positive emotions are a “prolonger of life and improver of health.”
Happy People Are More Connected With Others
The expression of good felings results in more secure relationships. Very happy people differ markedly from average people and from unhappy people in one principle way – a rich and fulfilling social life. Happy people have more close and casual friends, are more likely to be married, and are more involved in group activities than unhappy people. Happy people are also more altruistic. When we are in a good mood we are less focused on ourselves, we like others more and we want to be kinder and share our good fortune more with others. However, when we are experiencing negative emotions we become distrustful, turn inward and become defensive about our own needs.
Focusing on the Positive
Positive emotions undo negative emotions and reduce the negative physical and psychological stresses of negative experiences. Negative emotions tell you that you are facing a win-loss encounter and need to take steps to engage with the obstacles. Positive emotions tell you that you are in a potential win-win situation and guide you to be more expansive, tolerant, and creative so that you can maximize the social, intellectual, and physical benefits of the situation.
It is important to generate and build the experience of positive affective states rather than simply extinguishing negative emotions. Positive affective states become the fuel and the raw material for experiencing more growth and development, more exploration and discovery, more mastery and successful interactions in the world, and building, developing, using and leveraging our strengths.
You can dedicate this month to recognizing the importance of building a core motion towards happiness. You will broaden, build and become more successful in your world (whatever success means for you). Seek to align yourself with the wisdom expressed by the Dali Lama –
“I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness.
That is clear.
Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we are all seeking something better in life.
So I think, the very motion of our life is towards happiness” –Dali Lama
Are You Experiencing Positive Emotions?
Do you begin and end each day feeling excited and grateful?
Do you experience moments of pleasure throughout the day?
Do you experience gratification in the life you live and the work you are doing?
Is it easy for you to write down 5 things you appreciate about your day?
Do you feel like you are “in flow” for some parts of every day?
Do you believe that the “very motion of your life is towards happiness”?
If you answered “no” to any of the above, try taking steps to develop more of the good felings of positive emotions in your life.
Mary Ann Copson is a Mood and Brain Chemistry expert. She can determine your neurotransmitter profile and help you bring your brain chemistry back into balance with nutritional and wellness, dietary, herbal, supplement, lifestyle, and personal foundations recommendations. Moods, Neurotransmitters and Brain Chemistry
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Staying Positive & Successful – Watering Your Dreams With Trust and Belief
Forging new paths always involves trust. How many times have you given up wonderful experiences and opportunities because of doubt and fear? Even when you were first inspired to grab those experiences and opportunities, sometimes you let the fear and doubt take over. You let those negative emotions change your mind.
You decided not to take the opportunities and experiences life put in your path. Like talking to a certain someone, taking a lower paying job that you would have loved more (which probably would have led to something better because when you do what you love, the abundance follows), failing to tell someone you love them, not doing something you’ve always dreamed of that’s “out of your comfort zone”?
We’ve all done it, but if you want to create the life you desire, you’ve got to cultivate trust in yourself. By being aware of your inner self talk, you do have the ability to turn the momentum around. You can let the Universe bring the perfect people, wonderful opportunities into your experience. You just have to TRUST the Universe and open your eyes to what it’s bringing you. And then not allow the fear to get in the way.
Decide to TRUST a little bit more, and doubt a little bit less.
Think of what you DO want to create in your life as a seed that you’re planting. You have to water it with your trust, your belief, and your faith. Feed the trust with positive attention and actions and see what wonderful experiences and opportunities you create!
Deciding to live big and follow your dreams is scary, not just for you but for people around you who are allowing fear and doubt to control them. Remember to water the seeds of your dreams with positive nutrients so they can flower into something beautiful.
And now I would like to invite you to claim your Free Instant Access to my “Easy Product Creation Secrets” Video to learn how to turn your experiences into products when you visit http://www.ProductCreationBonus.com
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