Using Positive Psychology Every Day

Learning How to Flourish

Ernst Bohlmeijer, Monique Hulsbergen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351112895
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychotherapy
• Index: Psychology

We are all looking to flourish, to experience joy, feel engaged with the world, and experience meaningful lives. But the stresses and strains of our daily lives makes this a challenge. Using Positive Psychology Every Day: Learning How to Flourish is about (re)finding the art of living, enabling you to flourish.

Bringing together the best of positive psychology, this book introduces eight evidence-based resources of well-being and flourishing: positive emotions, the discovering and use of strengths, optimism, compassion, post-traumatic growth, positive relationships and spirituality. Each chapter has a concise, simple theoretical introduction and several evidence-based, easy-to-apply exercises.

This book is for anyone experiencing stress, distress or lower well-being, as well as coaches and therapists who can use the book for clients in the context of guided self-help.

Chapter 1

High time for joy

Introduction

The field of psychology has been dedicated mostly to unpleasant emotions, such as fear, grief, loneliness, sadness, shame, and aggression. Many theories have been developed regarding the underlying causes of unpleasant emotions and the things needed to mitigate their effects. This is understandable, because the long-held guiding principle was that unpleasant experiences hinder our happiness. Therapy can help take the edges off of our emotions. Nevertheless, unpleasant emotions are never fully erased and research has shown that we can become stranded in our endless quest to attempt to control these emotions (Hayes et al., 2004). Little attention was paid to pleasant emotions in psychology. In your own life, you too may hardly be aware of the moments when you experience pleasant emotions, such as happiness or love. You take them for granted, even though recent studies, which we will discuss below, demonstrate that this is not justified. In this chapter, we discuss how experiencing pleasant emotions is a major key to positive living. First we will explain why this is the case. Then, we will provide you with exercises that can help you experience more pleasant emotions. We would like to invite you to experience what happens once you focus your attention on pleasant emotions.

The importance of pleasant emotions

Tomorrow, take the time to observe your surroundings. What do you see in the faces on people you see in the street? Do they seem happy, good-natured, full of joy, extroverted; or do they seem surly, unhappy, burdened, tense, harried, introverted? How about at work? What is the mood like? How do people respond to each other?

You may note that people’s emotions and interactions sometimes appear to default to negative instead of positive. People seem to pay more attention to what is going wrong, to what is missing. There are, of course, countless exceptions – but generally speaking, our society seems to have in store more unpleasant experiences than pleasant ones. The news you read in newspapers or see on TV tends to emphasize negative events. Complaints and gossip are always lurking around the corner. It is as though our communications are more easily influenced by unpleasant emotions. It also seems to be part of our lifestyle – so much to do, so little time to do it, rushing off our feet, barely being able to truly relax, always working hard in pursuit of success, all the while trying to show the outside world what wonderful people we are. And all this effort comes at a price. Fatigue. Depression. Addiction. Fear. In short, many of us seem caught up in a life of effort and ambition. This makes it hard for us to hold on to our awareness, and to enjoy the pleasant aspects of life; it makes it hard to be inspired. Our capacity for long-lasting satisfaction and happiness seems to be missing. The emphasis is on quantity, instead of quality, of life.

This book distinguishes between pleasant and unpleasant emotions. The field of psychology often uses the terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’, which may lead you to think that it is the emotion itself that is negative. But despite the connotations of these terms, no emotion is inherently negative since they all fulfil an important role in our survival. Anger, grief, and sadness are generally perceived to be unpleasant, and can have destructive consequences if they are not recognized or expressed in a constructive manner. This chapter focuses on enhancing pleasant emotions, without covering up or suppressing unpleasant ones. Chapters 5 (on compassion) and 6 (on post-traumatic growth) discuss ways of dealing with unpleasant emotions.

Ten pleasant emotions

Being happy in your daily life and work is no easy feat. An important key to inspired living, to experiencing joy, is reinforcing the way you experience pleasant emotions every day. Barbara Fredrickson is an American professor who has conducted a lot of research into pleasant emotions. In this chapter, we are letting her work inspire us.

In her book Positivity, Fredrickson (2009) distinguishes between ten pleasant emotions:

• Joy

The feeling of happiness and delight you experience when something good happens to you, or when you are doing something you enjoy. This emotion makes you feel alive and unburdened.

• Gratitude

The feeling you experience when you receive something, especially if something performs an unexpected favour or if a situation turns to your advantage. Feeling privileged. Do not confuse this with the feeling that you owe someone a favour in return.

• Calm

Those moments where you are completely at peace, harmonious. Frequently achieved following some amount of effort.

• Interest

Something new has caught your attention. You feel the urge to find out more, to learn, to master.

• Hope

A potential boon during times of hardship. You feel and know from experience that things will get better.

• Pride

A feeling that is often the result of your expectation that others will appreciate something you have done or achieved. For this reason, it is also referred to as a self-aware emotion. Ranks slightly stronger than satisfaction.

• Cheer

Strongly linked to humour and conviviality.

• Inspiration

You feel touched by someone or something, and you feel the urge to explore, to turn over a new leaf. This is often the result of seeing someone do something remarkable.

• Awe

What you experience when, for example, you are impressed by a natural phenomenon, or by someone’s kindness or wisdom.

• Love

This encompasses and reinforces the other pleasant emotions. Often within the context of an intimate relationship or friendship. A many-faceted feeling to be certain.

Particular characteristics of pleasant emotions

The following are some notable points to consider with respect to the overview of pleasant emotions:

• Most pleasant emotions are experienced mainly when we feel safe and calm, when we feel we have all the time in the world, when we are tranquilly present in the here-and-now. This applies particularly to awe and calmness. The exception is hope: Hope is an emotion linked to times of adversity, to times of hardship. Hope is the confidence that things are going to change for the better in the foreseeable future. Restlessness, agitation, hurriedness all create a context in which pleasant emotions are felt and experienced less quickly.

• Some emotions are strongly linked to personal challenges and growth. For example, we feel proud when we succeed in completing a difficult challenge. Inspiration and interest drive us to explore the unknown, and to set new goals for ourselves.

• Other emotions let us rise above ourselves, such as gratitude, awe, love, and inspiration. They connect us to other people; they are accompanied by a feeling that we are part of a greater whole, and motivate us to commit to a common goal.

The importance of pleasant emotions

Why are pleasant emotions so important? Based on scientific experiments into the effects of pleasant emotions, Frederickson formulated a theory she called broaden and build. Here is a brief explanation:

Broaden

Before you read on, here is a little experiment for you.¹

• Grab a pen and paper.

• Take a minute or two to have a good look at the top of your hand. What do you see? What is the colour of your skin? What lines or veins can you make out? What do you notice around your knuckles?

• Pick up your pen. Imagine you have a free hour to s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1 High time for joy
• 2 Enjoy your talent
• 3 Lose yourself
• 4 Optimists are full of it!
• 5 Have a break
• 6 I am not who I once was
• 7 Sharing your positive life
• 8 Beyond the self
• Conclusion: a positive life as the art of living
• Recommended Further Reading
• Index