Positive Emotion

Don’t sit there too long waiting for happiness to appear, or wondering whether now is the right time to do something. Why not take a different approach? Why not act now and reflect afterwards on whether it worked? If it wasn’t quite right, you can change it, and in the meantime you will have learned something about yourself. This way, you can act your way into a new way of being happy.

I wish I had the room in this article to share all of the many insights I gained from this book. It has helped me to understand myself a bit better, and stand a bit taller in my general prevention-focused mindset. Though I still do have promotion envy, I also see where I can and do embrace a bigger picture. Beyond myself, this book has helped me to understand other important people in my life, including my family, my friends, my co-workers, and my clients.

Have you read the challenge published last summer by Brown, Sokal, and Friedman to the Fredrickson and Losada work on positivity tipping points? How about Barbara Fredrickson’s response? Paul Lee read both and sent this letter with his thoughts. We are publishing Paul’s letter is to acknowledge both the challenge and the response. We also want to celebrate science as an evolving discipline where it is important both to generate ideas and to challenge them.

The main message of this book is that it doesn’t work to focus only on the cognitive aspects of psychological well-being if you want to increase human flourishing. There are many processes involving the physical body that contribute to psychological well-being. If you have a serious interest in positive psychology and mental health, then reading Positive Psychology and the Body is a must.

In the second article in her series on comfort, Aren Cohen considers the expression “creature comforts.” A phrase originally intended to highlight the material possessions and luxuries that provide us with comfort, Aren explores how it works the other way around. Comfort can make us fully realized beings. Comfort can make us happy and brave creatures.

Nature can be an easy, free, and effective toolkit for supercharging positive psychology practice, supporting positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. Ultimately nature gives life to everything that supports flourishing. If we learn to nurture our relationship with the natural world, perhaps we’ll find it supports us in ways we never thought possible.

The first of a series of articles, Aren Cohen investigates the notion of Comfort and why it is a complex and relatively under-examined idea in positive psychology. Does experiencing comfort open the way to contentment, interest, and love? How does offering comfort soothe or console? Does comfort stem from attachment? What role does comfort play for children learning new things? Come explore this multi-faceted word.

Today I’d like to spend a few minutes looking at the many health benefits of owning a dog.

Nick Vujicic was born with phocamelia, a rare congenital condition that involves malformation of the limbs. With only a tiny little foot, he has defied the odds by becoming a motivational speaker, husband, and father. How has this been possible? As I observe him hobble on the platform set up on stage, I take a good hard look at myself. Here are 3 reasons that he inspires me.

Love contributes to health. It doesn’t stop with counting blessings. It’s not abstract. It’s deeply physical. Let’s follow the argument made by Barbara Fredrickson during the IPPA World Congress.

Since most business leaders are immersed in their own negativity bias, there is a distinct competitive advantage for focusing on the positive side of the science. Positive approaches remind us not only to give our attention to our most challenging customers and employees, but also to spend quality time with our best customers and employees. If you are in business, it is likely that your competitors are neglecting some of these opportunities. If you can do them well, you can indeed profit from the positive.

This is a ground-breaking volume of positive psychology research, and the breadth of perspectives is unparalleled. Not only are new and more specialized topics included, but even familiar topics are illustrated with up-to-date research, case studies, and examples. Clearly this is what positive psychology students and teachers need to progress the science, do high quality research, and put it out into the public domain.

The ability to just sit there may be exactly the ability we need during some of work’s most stressful moments. Our boss is inappropriately ranting during a meeting, and we just want to explode. An ability to ease the tension by focusing on the sensations of breathing may be just what our brains and our careers need. Train your inner CEO with mindfulness, and experience the health, happiness, and career benefits that can result.

The IPPA Third Wold Congress had up to 9 parallel sessions, so everybody’s experience was different. But some events were shared by most attendees, including fresh ways to think about the future and about love.

What does research tell us about the effectiveness of positive affirmations? When are they helpful? How can we make them more likely to be helpful?

An attentional bias is a predisposition of our attention to process certain types of information before others. Attentional biases in anxiety disorders are characterized by their intrinsic negativity, in particular, their consistency in selecting threatening stimuli instead of neutral or positive stimuli. Positive psychology can help with interventions such as working on people’s emotional maps, gratitude journals, character strengths, and mindfulness interventions.

We seem to be working harder and consuming more than ever before, but for all the stuff that comes with 21st century living to make our lives easier, less labor-intensive, and more comfortable, we don’t seem to be much happier. A growing number of people feel anxious and depressed. Can living a simpler life make us happier? The answer is not what you might expect.

Civility is the subject of Christine Porath’s chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Positive Organizational Scholarship. She presents the state of empirical research into civility in the workplace. She notes that there has been less empirical research into the benefits of civility than into the costs of incivility. She also makes several suggestions for building civility into workplace cultures.

How can a program be created to serve older persons transitioning from stage to stage in their elder years? Moving from independent living to nursing home living? How might they thrive in the process and throughout their lives? How could this apply to the professional and family caregivers? Here I share perspectives on cultivating emotional fitness in the elderly and their caregivers with stories showing the concepts in action.

There are many good reasons why we should focus more on flow as a route to well-being. Five of the best ones are highlighted here along with several tips for making flow experiences more likely.