The Value of Positive Emotions and Thoughts

The Value of Positive Emotions and Thoughts by Mary Ann Copson
Thinking and emotion go hand in hand. It seems that a negative mood activates negative thinking and a positive mood calls forth positive thinking. Does it matter if you are in a negative mood thinking negative thoughts or in a positive mood thinking positive thoughts? Is one better than the other? What is the advantage in thinking and feeling positive?
Emotions Have Evolutionary Value
Negative emotions have evolutionary value. Negative emotions like fear, loss, and aggression activate the flight or fight response. When we experience negative emotions, we have a feeling of aversion, which sets us on course to identify what is wrong and eliminate it. Negative emotions and thinking are associated with a survival alert that activates a reaction to fight, flight or conserve - each reaction with obvious evolutionary value.
Positive emotions also have evolutionary advantage. They "broaden and build." Experiencing positive emotions increases our survival chances because positive emotions broaden our intellectual, physical, and social resources and build reserves for us to draw upon.
Experiencing positive emotions increases our drive for exploration and discovery and provides the basis for positive social interactions. When we experience positive emotions, we become more tolerant, expansive, and creative. The more positive emotion we experience the more open to new ideas and new experiences we become.
Negative emotions narrow our perspective to focus only on the immediate threat. When negative emotions are experienced, we withdraw, freeze, or protect. When we experience positive emotions, we feel safe and engage in active, playful exploration, and discovery. Negative emotions contract and positive emotions expand.
Positive emotions form the experiential foundation for mentally healthy people. Positive emotions provide a foundation for growth and exploration and build the intellectual, social, and physical capital for further growth and development.
When we experience negative emotions, they tell us to deal with what is wrong and eliminate it. When we experience positive emotions, we start looking for the virtues of what is happening. We become constructive, generous, un-defensive, and open to seeing possibilities.
Experiencing positive emotions gives us an entirely different way of thinking from a negative mood. A negative mood helps us think about and detect threats in our environment and focus our thoughts on protection. A positive mood moves us into thoughts about growth and development, exploration and discovery.
Positive Emotions Build Resources and Capital for the Future
Positive emotions build the resources and capital that will become the basis for growth and development in years to come. When we feel and think positive, we reach outward and broaden our resources through exploration and discovery. We are more creative, think quicker, and do not succumb to premature closure or other forms of superficial intellectual processing.
Depressed people experience what is called a "downward spiral" of negative emotions. Depressed emotions call forth negative memories that feed more negative thoughts, that feed more negative memories, that feed more depressed emotions. Breaking this downward spiral is crucial to stopping the depression.
Psychologists have found what they call an upward spiral of positive emotion. Positive emotions produce a different way of thinking and acting. The thinking becomes creative and broad-minded, and the actions become adventurous and exploratory. This increased creativity and exploration results in greater expansion.
Often negative emotions and thinking are taken more seriously because traditionally they have been believed to be the evolutionary backbone of human motivation. It was believed that people are motivated primarily to avoid experiencing negative emotions and that positive motivation was merely superficial.
But positive emotions are just as real, authentic and important as negative emotions and are equally important for development, growth, and success.
Positive Emotions Lead to More Successful Interactions in the World
Experiencing more positive emotion results in more friendships, stronger love, better physical health, and more successful interactions in the world accompanied by a sense of mastery. Growth, positive development, and creative and successful interactions in the world (i.e. mental health) may have their foundations in the experience of positive emotions and thinking.
Happy people view themselves subjectively as more successful in the world. Happy people remember more good events than actually happened and forget more of the bad events that happened Happy people see success as lasting, personal and pervasive and failure as impersonal, temporary and specific. Happy people may lose a bit of realism but this does not lock them into ineffective functioning. Happy people are more likely to switch tactics when involved in a task that appears to be failing. In the normal course of events, happy people rely on their tried and true positive past experiences while less happy people are more skeptical. However, when events are threatening, happy people, more readily than less happy people, switch tactics and adopt a skeptical and analytical frame of mind. Happy people can deal better with adversity.
Happier people are markedly more satisfied with their jobs than less happy people. Happiness inceases productivity and results in higher income. Happiness also makes gainful employment and higher income more likely. Both adults and children who are in a good mood select higher goals, perform better, and persist longer on a variety of tasks.
Happy People Are Healthier
Positive emotions result in better physical health. Positive emotions predict health and longevity and protect people from the wear and tear of aging. Positive emotions strongly predict who lives longer, who dies earlier, and who will become disabled. Happy people are more likely to seek out and make use of health risk information. Happy people have better health habits, lower blood pressure, and stronger immune systems than less happy people. They endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions when threatened. Positive emotions and thinking prolong life and improve health.
Happy People Are More Connected With Others
Very happy people differ markedly from average people and from unhappy people in one principle way - a rich and fulfilling social life and more secure relationships. Happy people have more close and casual friends, are more likely to be married, and are more involved in group activities than unhappy people. Happy people are also more altruistic. When we are in a good mood we are less focused on ourselves, we like others more and we want to be kinder and share our good fortune with others. However, when we are experiencing negative emotions and thinking we become distrustful, turn inward and become defensive about our own needs.
Focusing on Positive Emotions
Positive emotions undo negative emotions and reduce the negative physical and psychological stresses of negative experiences. Negative emotions tell you that you are facing a win-loss encounter and need to take steps to engage with the obstacles. Positive emotions and thinking tell you that you are in a potential win-win situation.
Positive emotions and thinking guide you to be more expansive, tolerant, and creative and maximize the social, intellectual, and physical benefits of the situation. Positive emotions and thoughts provide both the fuel and the raw material for experiencing more growth and development, more exploration and discovery, more mastery and successful interactions in the world. So, yes, there is a great deal of value in feeling good and positive thinking. Go for it!
Copyright (c) 2007 Mary Ann Copson

Mary Ann Copson is the founder of the Evenstar Mood & Energy Wellness Center. With Master's Degrees in Human Development and Psychology and Counseling, Mary Ann is a Certified Licensed Nutritionist; Certified Holistic Health Practitioner; Brain Chemistry Profile Clinician; and a Health, Wellness and Lifestyle Coach. Reconnect to your physical, emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual natural rhythms at http://evenstaronline.com
Article Source: http://www.positivearticles.com

Ever Want To Change the World

Ever wanted to change the world?

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20 Great Problem Solving Tools and Techniques

Have you been faced with a problem but haven’t had the right tools and techniques for solving it. I’ve dug up 20 great problem solving tools and techniques that will reduce the time it takes you to solve problems. It doesn’t matter whether you’re solving small mental problems or really serious and complex problems these problem solving tools and techniques will still apply.

These tips can aid you through everyday life and will teach you how to deal with sometimes the most abstract of situations. One great tip for solving problems is to never be one dimensional about the whole process, creativity in many different forms will guide you to the answers.

These tips come from the great Win Wenger. . . He’s a modern day thinker in creative problem solving.

To read the rest of this article follow the link below

http://selfpursuit.com/33/problem-solving-tools-and-techniques/

Inspirational Video: Law of Attraction

Make It A Masterpiece

Make It A Masterpiece by Rhoberta Shaler

Developing an authentic lifestyle--one that truly reflects what is important to you in all areas of life--is a work of art. It is your personal statement to the world. Are you creating your masterpiece with both the intention and attention a great artist gives her creation?

Reflecting on the ideas and manipulating the materials over time, the artist begins to clarify the vision and, as the piece emerges, watches, refining her ideas, adding this, discarding that, reworking, until the materials begin to match the vision. Once the realization of the dream is glimpsed, work accelerates, and joy and passion carry the piece to completion. Isn’t that much like our lives?

Few artists receive their inspiration from attempting to fulfill someone else’s idea of what the clay, paint, rock, notes, words, fabric or wood might become. Imitation in art is only the tool of the student as the techniques are learned. The truly authentic work of art must come from within the artist, through the techniques and media, into reality.

Similarly, you cannot live the dreams of your parents, the desires of your friends or the visions of another with passion and integrity.

Great artists understand that their art is their personal expression, and is, therefore, unique. The artist values the medium for its potential to express the idea. The artist works diligently with it-- keeping the vision in view, making small adjustments, learning new techniques, experimenting--until the vision emerges in concrete form and becomes an extension of the artist. It is visible then to all who care to look. The piece bears the artist’s name and influences all who view it.

Sometimes, pieces do not please the artist and they are reworked, painted over, melted down, unraveled. These pieces have great inherent value. The artist’s vision is clarified, the materials better understood. This contributes much to the next project, the next work of art.

Sometimes, pieces become a legacy and influence many by their existence. These are the authentic works, the true expressions of the artist. These are the quality pieces, as Willa A. Foster, says, “Quality is never an accident; it is the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives.”

You want your life to be of quality, filled with wise choices. Therefore, approach it with high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution.

When creating a work of art, you must be present with it, fully engaged each moment, totally absorbed by the possibility you are actualizing and the potential you are exploring. This intense focus is required if you are not to be distracted by the myriad of seductive, and easy to justify diversions. It is a powerful process uplifting, inspiring, sometimes frustrating, satisfying, and, most of all, creative. When you are making a success of something, it s not work. It‘s a way of life.

Now, if by chance, you are thinking that viewing your life as a work of art, or a lofty contribution to the world, is impractical compared to a factual time-management, goal-oriented, bottom-line approach, please consider this. Every successful business, organization and corporation has two types of leaders, visionaries and administrators. Both are required. You need to be both visionary and administrator in your own life, to live a life of integrity, of wholeness.

After all, would you prefer your life to be a fleeting statistic, or a memorable piece of performance art?

By Rhoberta Shaler, PhD
www.SpiritualLivingNetwork.com



Rhoberta Shaler, PhD, has helped thousands to see life differently. Dr. Shaler connects people with their authentic selves, their purpose and values, and provides insights and inspiration to overcome the challenges of personal, family and business life.To learn more, visit: www.Rhoberta.com. and join www.SpiritualLivingNetwork.com . It’s fr*ee.

Article Source: http://www.positivearticles.com

The Divine Matrix 20 Keys to Concious Creation

This is a great video that I think you will enjoy

10 Steps to a Life of Simplicity (and some Extras too!)

10 Steps to a Life of Simplicity (and some Extras too!)

Ever felt your brain was so full of thoughts that it felt like it was going to explode?
You would be suffering from classic symptoms of stress caused by an overload of information
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or go to http://www.mindhacks.org for more articles like this.