Do you remember the time...
Allowing ourselves to remember good times during our busy day will make us feel more positive
Joy, love, amusement, gratitude and pride are solid foundations of a positive life.
According to Positive Psychologist Dr. Barbara Fredrickson – who has spent over 20 years studying positive emotions, there are four steps to increasing our positivity ratio. The idea isn’t to avoid negative emotions – they also have their benefits - but to counteract the negativity by boosting our ratio of positive emotions.
The four steps are:
Allow yourself to go back and re-experience positive emotions on a regular basis. Remembering what different positive emotions feel like allows us to recognise them more easily.
Act as though you feel the emotion. Pretending to be excited or inspired will actually encourage muscle memory and have a positive emotional effect.
Put yourself in situations where you’re more likely to feel positive emotions. E.g. In the wilderness, with friends, plan a romantic meal or watch a comedy. Know where and why you feel positive emotions and prioritise time for those activities.
Be mindful of what you’re already feeling. Often we feel positive emotions, but we’re too busy going about our daily routines and living on autopilot to fully experience them. Tuning into our emotions regularly, allows us to realise our feelings and even magnify them.
