Evoke Potential, LLC Newsletter – Vol: 5 – November 2012

Do you want to flourish and live a longer life?  Increase your positivity.

Source: Positivity by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D.

If you want to reshape your life for the better, increase your quantity of positivity over time. Aim for a positivity ratio of 3:1 – for every heart-wrenching negative emotional experience you endure, you experience at least three heartfelt positive emotional experiences that uplift you. This 3:1 ratio is the tipping point that predicts whether people languish or flourish.

Test Your Positivity Ratio

10 Forms of Positivity:   

1. Joy – What brings you joy?
2. Gratitude – What are you grateful for?
3. Serenity – When was the last time you savored a moment?
4. Interest – When did interest last draw you in?
5. Hope – What possibilities do you believe exist?
6. Pride – What makes you proud?
7. Amusement – When was the last time you laughed?
8. Inspiration – When were you inspired to do your best?
9. Awe – When have you felt overwhelmed by greatness?
10. Love – When have you felt love surge within you?

So how can you experience more positivity in your life? Give more of your attention and focus to things that are positive and less to things that are negative – start looking for what’s good, uplifting, and positive instead of what’s bad, depleting, and negative.

Decrease negativity: 

• Dispute negative thinking – Check your negative thoughts against reality by looking at the facts.
• Break the grip of rumination – Become aware of when you are stuck in a cycle of rehashing negative thoughts and emotions that lead you nowhere good (needless negativity). Engage in a positive activity (exercise, meditation, yoga, etc.) that takes your mind off your troubles and lifts your emotions.
• Become more mindful – Pay attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. With practice, you can learn to observe the contents of your mind calmly, in a nonreactive way.
• Diffuse negativity land mines – Reflect on your typical daily routine and ask yourself which circumstances fuel the most needless negativity. 1) Modify the situation; 2) Attend to different aspects of the situation, or 3) change its meaning.
• Assess your media diet – Pay close attention to how you feel during and after taking in media. How could you alter your media diet to cut out needless negativity?
• Find substitutes for gossip and sarcasm – When talking about others, highlight their positive qualities and good fortunes, not their weaknesses and mishaps.

Increase positivity:

• Open your heart – To truly benefit from gestures of positivity, (a smile, embrace, etc.) you must slow down and take in what the gesture means. Make it heartfelt.
• Find positive meaning – When you reframe unpleasant circumstances in a positive way, you boost the odds that positive emotions, like hope, will flow forth.
• Savor goodness – Willfully generate, intensify, and prolong your heartfelt enjoyment of good events by slowing down and taking the time to appreciate all the good aspects of them.
• Count your blessings – Recast aspects of your daily life that seem mundane or hidden from view as gifts to be cherished, such as appreciating how others have been kind to you.
• Express kindness – Maintain typical expressions of kindness on typical days, but choose a particular day to step up your kindness to a much higher level to get a boost of positivity.
• Follow your passions – Find activities that allow you to enter flow states where you become fully absorbed.
• Dream about your future – Conjure up the best possible outcomes for yourself, and visualize your future successes in great detail.
• Apply your strengths – Find new ways to apply your strengths to get a boost in positivity that is significant and lasting.
• Connect with others – People who flourish spend more time each day with the people they are close to and less time alone. So connect with others every day, no matter what.
• Connect with nature – Go outside. Being outside allows you to see farther, and seeing farther may be all it takes to expand your thinking and give you more to feel good about.
• Open your mind – Positivity and openness feed on each other, each triggering and reinforcing the other. Positivity opens your mind naturally. Be open, and positivity will follow.

Positive emotions open our hearts and minds and allow us to discover and build new skills, new ties, new knowledge, and new ways of being. Positivity broadens and builds. It transforms people and helps them become their best. And when at their best, people live longer.

“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.”
– Andre Gide

“People think angels fly because they have wings. Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”
– Anonymous

“When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.”
– Tom Robbins

Evoke Potential, LLC can help you…

• Increase your positivity, so that you flourish.
• Increase the positivity of your employees, so that they flourish.
• Create a flourishing work environment.