>I was doing some reading this weekend and found this article. Definitely worth thinking about.
The Value of Positive Emotions
Barbara L. Fredrickson
Back in the 1930s some young Catholic nuns were asked to write short, personal essays about their lives. They described edifying events in their childhood, the schools they attended, their religious experiences and the in- fluences that led them to the convent. Although the essays may have been ini- tially used to assess each nun’s career path, the documents were eventually archived and largely forgotten. More than 60 years later the nuns’ writings surfaced again when three psycholo- gists at the University of Kentucky re- viewed the essays as part of a larger study on aging and Alzheimer’s dis- ease. Deborah Danner, David Snowdon and Wallace Friesen read the nun’s bio-graphical sketches and scored them for positive emotional content, recording instances of happiness, interest, love and hope. What they found was re- markable: The nuns who expressed the most positive emotions lived up to 10 years longer than those who expressed the fewest. This gain in life expectancy is considerably larger than the gain achieved by those who quit smoking.
All of this suggests that we need to develop methods to experience more positive emotions more often. Positive meaning can be obtained by finding benefits within adversity, by infusing ordinary events with meaning and by effective problem solving. You can find benefits in a grim world, for instance, by focusing on the new found strengths and resolve within yourself and others. You can infuse ordinary events with meaning by expressing appreciation, love and gratitude, even for simple things. And you can find positive meaning through problem solving by supporting compassionate acts toward people in need. So although the active ingredient within growth and resilience may be positive emotions, the leverage point for accessing these benefits is finding positive meaning.
So, what good is it to think about the good in the world? The mind can be a powerful ally. As John Milton told us, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
