Positivity summary

First,the good news: we all are born with the main ingredient of a happy life: positive emotions. However, few of us naturally experience enough of them to stay positive in hard times, like during a breakup or a severe illness.

Those who are lucky enough to experience mainly positive emotions have a generally positive attitude toward life, which makes them resilient and successful.

You know that feeling when you’re full of hope, anything seems possible, and your energy seems boundless? You’re experiencing the world-expanding power of positive emotions.

So what emotions are we talking about?

As we’ve seen, due to their importance in our evolutionary past, negative emotions are stronger in their amplitude than positive ones. One moment of anger or sadness drags us down further than one of joy or pride lifts us up. This leads to an imbalance in our emotion ratio: we tend to experience more negative emotions than positive ones.

And to gain a general positive attitude toward life, you need the right ratio between positive and negative emotions.

If you experience more sadness, anger and hatred than joy, don’t worry – you’re like most people. But don’t give up either – you too can learn to have a positive attitude. But it’ll take some work.

Some will object and say there’s a strong genetic influence on our ratio of positive to negative emotions that we can’t change. But your genetic setup is just a framework in which you can navigate, and there are a few techniques you can use in order to increase your positive emotions.

For millennia, philosophers have noticed the link between self-knowledge and happiness. This is why the first thing you should do in order to change your positive emotion ratio is to observe yourself: document your own behavior, find out what makes you feel good, and try and cultivate those behaviors.

The simplest way to do this is to meticulously write down how your feelings change over the course of the day: how did you feel when you woke up, after you’d put on your clothes, after breakfast, and so on.

Mindfulness is the new buzzword we read about everywhere – with claims that if you cultivate it it’s a powerful way to change your habits and intensify positive emotions in your everyday life.

But what exactly does mindfulness mean?

It might sound easy to change our habits, but it’s actually hard work. We’re stuck in our routines, and permanent change requires willpower – or some proven techniques.

One of these methods is meditation.