Positive psychologists study the benefits of positive emotions and positive activities for their capacity to enhance our well-being while also recognizing the value of negative emotions. The negative emotion fear, for example, alerts us to life-threatening situations. While it is impossible to suppress negative emotions and thoughts, and trying to do so is in fact harmful to us; our freedom to watch our thoughts and choose those that inspire positive beliefs is within our control.
While recognizing the value of negative emotions and the harmful nature of suppressing them, it’s equally important to know that by nature, negative emotions constrict our thoughts and create a downward emotional spiral that we can be stuck in. On the other hand, positive emotions also build on themselves, creating positve upward emotional spirals that lift us from the dark, constricting, tank.
In her recently published book, “Positivity”, Barbara Fredrickson refers to a sailboat’s engineering as a metaphor to explain the need for both posive and negative emotions. Without a keel, (negative emotions), a sailboat will capsize in rough waters or winds and without sails (positive emotions), the boat will never catch the winds for motion.
By paying attention to what we are thinking, positive or negative, we can even the score. Based on her research, Fredrickson explains her discovery- a 3:1 positivity ratio. When we think three positive thoughts for each negative thought, we reach a “tipping point” that advances the score in favor of overall emotional well-being. As Mark Twain has said, “Drag your thoughts away from your troubles…by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.”
