Can I make myself feel more positive? Luckily the answer is yes! But we can’t feel more positive by simply telling ourselves to “just feel better about this”. So how do I feel more positive?
One way to experience more positive emotions is by intentionally engaging in certain activities that provide positive emotions. Research shows that consistently engaging in these behaviors can improve well-being and make us feel better about ourselves. Emerging research also finds that activities that bring more positive emotions may also prevent things like anxiety and depression.
This video describes these ideas and helps introduce our series on strategies you can use to feel more positive! If you are interested you can also check out a good book on positive emotions research and strategies to feel more positive.
Hi, I’m Dr. Matt B, and these are your Emotional Minutes. One of the things I realized is that positive emotions would be an excellent thing to talk about. One, because I have training in research-based positive emotion strategies. And two, these strategies have been shown to boost people’s mood and well-being, as well as limit or prevent things like depression, anxiety, and low sense of well-being.
Research on Positive Emotions
Positive emotions have been an area of research that has come up a lot in the last decade or so. What that research looks at are ways that you can boost your own emotions in everyday life. Luckily, it doesn’t take medication! It just takes a little bit of effort and time.
Much of this research is running under the assumption that you can’t just sit and let yourself or tell yourself to feel better. Unfortunately, we, as humans, just don’t work that way. That would be pretty sweet if we did, but you can’t just sit and tell yourself to feel better.
Much of this research assumes that there are behaviors or activities you can do to give you a good feeling. You probably recall this in your own life when you did things like playing an enjoyable sport or feeling a sense of accomplishment after creating a craft.
In our upcoming series on positive emotions, we will cover some of the research-based strategies, what these research-based strategies are, and how they boost your positive emotions in your life.
Influences on Positive Emotion
A lot of this research also looks at our ability to make these things happen. Sometimes people will think or assume that their external world or the things going on outside of their own body or behavior controls a hundred percent of how happy they are or are not going to be.
The idea might be things like circumstances around me are making it so that I’m unhappy or when things change or if I move, I’ll feel better. And to some degree, these things can affect our mental health. That’s legitimate and valid, but typically around 50% of life is what happens to us, and about the other 50% is how we respond to what happens to us.
A lot of this research looks at how you use these ways or that 50% to boost your own emotions to feel better from day to day. It also looks at how you help yourself get a more positive sense of well-being and decrease negative emotions. We will do a series talking about and going into some depth about some of these positive emotion strategies that you can do.
Notes on These Strategies
A couple of things about these strategies: sometimes it can seem overwhelming or like there are too many. So, pick the ones, maybe two or three, that seem to work for you. It might help to put a lot of variety into them by engaging in different activities that fit within a specific category. For example, one of the strategies we will go over is acts of kindness.
Another thing to note is that many of these take a lot of intention or purposeful behavior and action. They are things that take us scheduling and making some time to do on purpose. They can be small things that go a long way in terms of boosting positive emotions.
Using Positive Emotions Strategies
For instance, you can say you will do these certain activities on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. Or you might notice you had a more strenuous day and are more stressed and feeling or thinking more negatively, so you intentionally engage in some of these strategies to boost your mood. Usually, a mix of both scheduling activities and using them as needed is an effective way to use these tools.
I’m very excited to jump into this with you in terms of giving a lot of tools and strategies. So, stay tuned for the next six or seven episodes. We will go into a lot of these strategies. These are your Emotional Minutes, and we will see you next time.
