ShareThisEmotional refers to how you feel and the wide spectrum of emotions we experience by being human. Some of the topics I've described that involve emotions and different tools to help you understand your emotions include:
Based on the research by Dr. Barbra Fredrickson, the broaden and build theory answers the critical question psychologists spent decades asking—what good are positive emotions?
Scientist knew the evolutionary value of negative emotions; our ancestors who were good at experiencing anger and anxiety were better at protecting themselves from potential environmental threats. Those who felt fear when they saw a saber tooth tiger and immediately ran the other way did a much better job of surviving that those who did not. Negative emotions have a specific thought-action tendency: they narrow your focus, attention, and available actions.
Dr. Barbra Fredrickson’s research revealed that positive emotions have quite different effects; the attention and actions associated with positive emotions are much more open and expansive. When you’re feeling joyous, you experience a number of things- the desire to create, play, share, and connect. Research shows that when people are in a positive state, they come up with more creative ideas and are able to see outside the box; their vision literally expands and allows them to see further into their periphery than those in a negative state. Positive emotions help indicate that we are safe and free to broad and build up on our positive thoughts, feelings, and actions.
The emotions you experience create ‘spirals.’ Negative emotions can spiral you down to a fixed point where it’s difficult to think creatively and find new solutions. Your negative emotions are working to narrow your focus and enhance your sense of self-preservation and protection from the ‘threats’ in your day to day life.
Alternatively, positive emotions create upward spirals. For example, when you’re feeling the positive emotion of gratitude, you’re more likely to notice the positive things going on around you, which makes you feel more grateful, which makes you notice more positive things around you, etc., and the spiral just continues to expand, broadening your emotional resources to build on.
It is not that negative emotions are "bad" and positive emotions are "good," they each just serve a different function. One of the key's to personal mastery is understanding how your emotions function in order to influence how you experience them.
To learn more about how to increase your of positive emotions so you can experience more opportunities to broaden and build in your life, contact me to learn more about available services.
According to Drs. Karen Reivich, Andrew Shatte and other cognitive psychologists, there is a direct link between our thoughts and feelings. That is... how you are thinking affects how you feel and how you feel affects your thoughts. Understanding these basic principles can help you understand yourself better and nurture a more empathetic connection to others.
Belief Emotion
"I am being harmed... My rights are being violated." Anger
"Something bad might happen... Future harm." Fear/Anxiety
"I have lost something I value." Sadness/Depression
"I have caused harm." Guilt
"I don't measure up." Embarassement
How to use this chart?
I find that it's a great tool for understanding yourself. Often times people think that there eotions are things that just happen to them. They don't realize that those emotions are linked to beliefs.
Next time you experience any of the emotions above you can find the belief. When you find yourself feeling anxious, ask yourself, "What negative thing am I believing might happen?" If you're feeling sad, ask yourself, "What do I believe I have lost?"
Asking yourself these questions can help you understand where the emotion is originating and how to handle the situation. By identifying the belief you can also look for evidence about whether that belief is true. For example, imagine you get angry at someone. The underlying beliefs maybe that they are trying to hurt you on purpose. You can then look to find evidence for or against the thought before simply believing that it's true.
Understanding that your thoughts affect your emotion gives you an opportunity to be less reactive in a situation.
Want to learn more? Contact me :-).
This is a technique that I learned from my coach, mentor and friend Deb Giffen. She taught me that you can transform an emotion that is stopping you from showing up in the world the way you want to by adding LOVE to it.
It’s quite a profound concept that she has worked into an equation… Watch it in action:
Fear + Love = Excitement
If you take something you’re afraid of…
“I’m scared to leave a job that I’m comfortable but not fulfilled by.”
At first glance, that fear can be debilitating; it can prevent you from taking even the first steps of asking yourself how to make that possible. Finding a way to LOVE that fear transforms it.
You can love the fear by reminding yourself that the things that stretch us and are part of stepping into our path are going to be the things that scare us. If it were too easy you’d get bored, you wouldn’t want to do it. When you’re following your intuition you can’t go wrong. The fear is going to come up to say, “Hey! Be careful! Stepping out of your comfort zone means you can get hurt… Stay small. Staying small is safe. You can’t get hurt that way.” Your fear is not usually accurate; it’s there to protect you. Loving that part of yourself enables you to trust that when you are moving from a space of alignment with your truth, you can’t fail. The fear isn’t real. The fear is there to enable you to game plan with precaution.
Then you can get excited. Excited about your path and what the Universe will provide you as your path unfolds.
Anger + Love = Determination
Sadness + Love = Honoring
coming soon...
coming soon...
coming soon...
Research shows that expressing and experiencing gratitude is one of the most powerful ways to increase your life satisfaction, and psychological and physical health.
Studies have been conducted where people were assigned to expressing gratitude compared to a control group. Those in the gratitude condition experienced increased positive emotion and decreased depression symptoms, reported having more energy, better sleep, alertness, enthusiasm, determination, feeling of being connected, optimistic, take better preventative care of themselves and meet their goals.
Gratitude creates positive upward spirals in your life. When you are feeling more positive, you are more likely to be aware of positive things that are going on around you. Being aware of positive things increased your sense of gratitude. Onward and upward.
In research studies where participants wrote about 3 good things that had happened to them and how they contributed to that good thing happening, participants were able to significantly increase their happiness level and decrease their rate of depression. Those effects still held true 6 months later, particularly for people who valued the exercise and continued to do it.
Create structured activities like writing down what you are grateful for in the morning or evening. Over time you might find yourself expressing gratitude spontaneoulsy throughout the day.
Want to learn more about scientifically proven activities for increasing your happiness? Checkout the 13 Week Guide to a More Flourishing You or learn more about Positive Psychology Coaching and Programs.
Contrary to some people's beliefs, happiness requires effort. If left to our own devices, our brain would lean towards the negative (see negativity bias) and staying in a space of positivity often requires cultivating positive habits. Otherwise, we adapt to the people around us, the things we have, what we do, etc.
Some people view happiness as the holy grail... our birthright and "what life is all about." Others will say, "Emiliya, why bother with happiness? It requires a lot of work?"
Recently, research has provided us with information on the value of happiness a long with multiple approaches to making happiness attainable.
Studies by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky et al. show that happy people are more sociable, energetic, charitable, cooperative, liked by others, likely to be married, likely to stay married, self confident, productive, resilient, engage at work, engaged with people, likel to live longer, mentally healthier, physically healthier, have stronger immune systems, more social support and earn more money!
If that isn't a reason to read and apply the many tools available on this site, then I don't know what is. Ready to increase your happiness? Contact me to join one of our positive psychology coaching groups or find out about individual coaching!
coming soon...
To love and be loved refers to the ability to be vulnerable and allow other people to share their emotions with you. The capacity to love and be loved is one of the top five VIA Signature Strengths mostly strongly correlated with life satisfaction.
It’s important to note that the capacity to give and receive love is a state of mind that can continuously be cultivated, enhanced, and experienced stronger. The capacity to be loved, or the ability to receive love from others, is often harder than giving love, because it requires you to be vulnerable. Allowing others to love you is necessary for a flourishing life, and there are many ways to increase your experiences of love.
By making a slight mindset shift and bringing awareness to your heart, you can move out of your head and into your mental heart. Research at the Heart Math Institute shows that the heart essentially has a mind of it’s own that can profoundly impact the way you perceive and respond to the world. Bringing awareness to your heart and experiencing positive emotions, decreases irregular heart rate rhythms and improves balance in the nervous system.
Dr. Barbara Fredrickson’s recent research revealed that love and kindness meditations that focus on brining a feeling of love into the body and awareness of your heart center was a powerful tool for increasing positive emotions.
In love and kindness meditations, first focus on yourself, then someone you care about, and finally someone you have difficulty with or hostility towards. Systematically send each person you think of thoughts of loving-kindness, focusing on the mantra “may you be happy, may you be happy, and may your heart be a peace.”
To learn more about the Heart Math Institute, click here.
Permission to be human was coined by Dr. Tal Ben Shahar. This truthful and impactful mantra is one that I often play in my head.
As a positive psychology practitioner I often get people questioning whether I’m trying to promote “happiology” or trying to just make everyone happy all the time. Of course I’m not. That would be denying the human experience. The only way you could be happy all the time is if you were on some drug keeping you that way.
I use the terms positive and negative emotions, however, I don’t use those words as moral terms. It’s not that positive is good and negative is bad. Most people prefer having more positive than negative emotions in their life, but it’s not that we should shy away from the negative. It’s shying away from emotion that makes you get stuck in that emotion.
The key thing is that experiencing an emotion is different than expressing that emotion.
I’ve heard people say things like, “I don’t get angry.” That bewilders me since anger is something that happens when people feel that their rights have been violated. It’s nearly impossible to go through life and never have someone disrespect you, interrupt you in a conversation, cut you off on the street, push your buttons etc. It would be chaotic if everyone expressed anger at anything they perceived as a violation of their rights. However, not allowing yourself to experience the emotion makes it get stuck within you. Often we hold our issues in our tissues and keeping emotion pent up causes dis-ease in the body.
Permission to be human means honoring what you are feeling. That can be to yourself, by writing it down or communicating it to others. If someone “triggers you”, rather than trying to brush that trigger away, or feel guilty about feeling that way, simply acknowledge to yourself how you are feeling. Be with it. Breathe with the emotion. The actual emotion won’t last very long unless you attach a story to it.
We can get stuck in positive emotions just as much as negative emotions. For example, imagine a person that is so in love with their partner, they can start to worry about what it might be like one day if, “things change.” Latching on to the positive can make you just as dependent and fearful of change. A zen-mind is one where you recognize that everything is an experience, with a great benevolent purpose to it.
As Dr. Tal Ben Shahar puts it, "Mental health is the ability to digest everything without repulsing anything." Mental health is the ability to digest the emotions and experiences you have.
Permission to be human also refers to the concept of contrast. Everything in the Universe pulsates with contrast... Ying/Yang, Feminine/Masculine, Sun/Moon, Good/Bad. It's is the contrast of challenges that enable us to savor and appreciate the things when they are working. Recognizing that pulsation is unavoidable can enable the permission to be human. If everything were perfect, something would seem wrong. As humans we love to have mastery experiences, to grow and evolve. Contrast and pulsation gives us opportunities to do that.
Having a hard time being human or giving yourself the permission to be? Contact me and learn about how flourishing programs can help you!
Santosa is one of the yogic niyamas, or observances within yourself. Santosa translates into contentment or a sense of peace and happiness with what you have. It's finding the pleasure rather than displeasure of your life.
Clients often tell me... "Sure it's easy to be happy with things when they are working..." But that's not what the yogic philosophers meant. Contentment and happiness is your choice, and it's available to you wherever and whenever. People often fear being content with where they are in their life because then they fear that they won't continue to strive for more.
Practicing Santosha doesn't mean settling or surrendering a deeper desire for happiness. It's, "I accept myself as I am right now, and I know I can change."
Santosa represents a state of underlying contentment, trust and ease that things are well in life. Even if they aren't the way you want them to be, trusting that things will change... you will support them and lead them to change.
Santosha is about being happy with your worldly possessions so that you are not clinging to the external to bring you happiness internally.
Santosha is being content with what your actions (instead of constantly beating yourself up with "I should be doing more"), what you have (instead of "their grass is greener"), who you are (instead of "I wish I were more like them"), what you have done (instead of "I haven't accomplished anything"), or what you are doing (instead of "I hate what I do").
Santosha means making the best out of where you are. If you're in a space where you are planted, then might as well blossom! You can always reframe that "hating what you do" is a positive because it becomes the impetus for stepping out of your comfort zone and doing something different.
Just trying to change your circumstances without first being at peace with where you are at in your life can make for a more negative change experience.
Finding it hard to find peace, contentment and happiness in your life? Contact me, I can help.
Self-efficacy belongs under the "mental" section since it is a belief in one's ability to make positive changes happen in their life given their skill. However, I place it under the "emotional" section because it's also a feeling about one's self. Many people have heard a great deal about self-esteem and building one's sense of feeling good about themselves. However, research shows that simply increasing one's self esteem is not as powerful as increasing a sense of self-efficacy.
Self-efficacy includes self-esteem under it's umbrella,
