18 clever tips and tricks to trigger or increase your positive emotions.
Did you know that it is easier for you to dwell more on negative emotions than on positive ones? Research postulates that “negative events elicit more rapid and more prominent responses than non-negative events”. This is referred to as negativity bias.
The theory of negativity bias traces its origin back to human evolution. Our ancestors, faced with more immediate threats to their survival than we are today, needed to pay more attention to dangers in their environment in order to stay safe.
Despite the elimination of most of these dangers, more recent studies on social psychology suggest that we still possess genes that make us more attentive to negative, dangerous, or traumatic experiences.
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Notably, both negative and positive emotions are normal parts of our lives. The difference lies in how we interact with each category and the effect these emotions have on our lives.
When negativity bias is left to run wild, it can be detrimental to your mental health. Further, it can negatively impact your ability to build healthy relationships and maintain a positive perspective of life.
On the other hand, you can counter negative emotions by taking deliberate steps towards cultivating more positive emotions.
So, what are positive emotions? I have explained this with examples. I have also covered the benefits of positive thinking and outlined actionable tips to help bring positive emotions into your life.
What Are Positive Emotions?
These are pleasant or desirable feelings, states, responses, or attitudes that can be both involuntary or intentional depending on the circumstances.
Positive psychology projects a positive emotion to be intense and pleasurable. Positive feelings can change your perception, reasoning, and attentiveness in a way that significantly impacts your life for the better.
Common words used to describe positive feelings or emotions include happiness, love, gratitude, joy, amusement, pride, serenity, hope, affection, cheerfulness, contentment, eagerness, enjoyment, goodness, euphoria, optimism, admiration, enthusiasm, confidence, relief, and cheerfulness among others.
How Positive Emotions Promote Your Well Being
Positive emotions are more than just feeling generally good about yourself and everything else around you. The broaden and build theory of positive psychology suggests that positive emotions, and in particular joy, interest, contentment, and love can broaden your mind and lead to the promotion of responses that can help build your well-being physically, intellectually, socially, and psychologically.
Among the main benefits of positive emotions is the reduction of stress. Positive thinking buffers the effect of negative emotions and helps you cope better in stressful circumstances.
Positive emotions broaden how you interact with other people which helps you build better relationships be it with a romantic partner, friend, workmates, or family, echoing the broaden and build theory. This is because human beings are attracted to positive people and tend to shy from negative people.
Further, broadened behavior resulting from positive feelings expands your scope of cognition and the flexibility of your thoughts and ideas which in the long run enhances creative thinking.
Best of all, positive emotions boost positive emotions. This is because they result in positive experiences which outlive the initial feelings that created them and keep on building on themselves.
Tips To Increase Positive Emotions
In order to increase positive emotions, you will need to be intentional in the adoption, shunning as well as modification of certain behaviors. Here are 18 tips to nudge you in the right direction.
1. Adopt Relaxation Techniques
Relaxation helps you to counter the stress response that is hardwired in our bodies and easily triggered by stressful situations.
According to an article published by Harvard Medical School, engaging in relaxation techniques like meditation, guided imagery, yoga, repetitive prayer, and breath focus for at least 20 minutes daily can help you respond more calmly to inevitable stressors in your life.
2. Smile Often
Smiling is therapeutic not just for you but for those around you. Apparently, the reason why you feel happy the instant you smile has everything to do with the release of minute molecules called neuropeptides and the feel-good neurotransmitters serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins.
Their release leads to a lower heart rate, relaxation, better mood, and lower blood pressure. As a bonus, you look better and more attractive when you smile!
Here’s the interesting part; your brain cannot really tell if the smile is fake or not so, just smile away!
3. Let Music Lift Your Mood
Want to boost your mood, happiness levels, quality of life, and self-esteem? Listen to some uplifting music or better yet, sing or play some instrument.
Only ensure that the music is positively valenced rather than sad or depressing and listen with the intent to feel happy.
In fact, studies indicate that music therapy can also help alleviate postoperative pain and anxiety. That’s reduced pain medication and fewer side effects!
4. Draw Positive Meaning From Every Situation
As I mentioned earlier, dwelling on the negative just comes naturally to us. What if you can try and practice positive reappraisal? This would involve picking something positive about a bad situation and being grateful for it.
Let’s say you had a bad review of your work from a client that totally messed up your confidence.
It is within your power to dwell on the negative feelings or to use the event as a learning opportunity and instead feel grateful.
5. Do Things That You Love
Pursuing a hobby is another way to create an upward spiral of positive emotions. Whether it is soccer, painting, knitting, or dancing, a hobby engages your creative side, reduces stress, and gives you a break from your daily routines.
This brings out the best in you and stimulates the ‘feel good’ area of the brain, activating feelings of happiness in the process.
6. Practice A Few Power Poses
There is no evidence that power poses will magically change your life and make you successful without you putting in the work and time.
But again, we are about positive feelings here and one thing a power pose can do for you is make you feel more confident and empowered to face whatever lies ahead.
7. Bounce Back And Move On
The loss of a job, a loved one, or the aftermath of a bad breakup can cause negative emotions to get out of control. While it is advisable to go through the whole grieving cycle, it is good to keep in mind that the more you dwell on the loss the longer it takes to heal.
Making the choice and effort to bounce back from a breakup or any other bad experience and moving on can help you to start experiencing positive emotions.
8. Break From Routines That Heighten Negative Emotions
What is wrecking your emotions? It’s probably something you have no control over. Still, have you considered that certain habits could just be kicking your negative emotions a few notches higher?
Habits like poor sleep patterns, adopting a junk-laden diet, overindulging in alcohol and caffeine, and living in a messy environment are associated with feelings of sadness, irritability, stress, and anxiety among others.
9. Acknowledge That You Can’t Always Change Things
Bad things happen to good people and sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. That said, while you have no control over how people treat you, how you respond is entirely your choice.
It is okay to not try to change a bad situation and instead respond to it with a positive attitude for your own sake.
10. Start And Spend Every Day With Positive Affirmations
Positive affirmations are phrases that help you to believe in your abilities and especially when you are facing inadequacies or difficult situations. You can declare these affirmations out loud, write them down on sticky notes, or save them on your phone with reminders to start your day and repeat throughout the day. This can help to drown self-doubt and negative thoughts.
Notably, positive affirmations are not oblivious of the situation at hand. On the contrary, they acknowledge the reality of the challenge but also invoke your ability to overcome and move forward.
A good example, “ I am strong enough to overcome the mess this breakup has left me in”.
11. Focus And Work On One Positive Emotion At A Time
Sometimes, working on all the positive emotions you have on a list at the same time can leave you feeling awfully stretched. What if you can choose one positive emotion and work towards achieving it? This can give you a quicker feeling of progress and achievement.
Let’s say you want to work on gratitude. You can think of and list down things that make you feel grateful and add on to your list every time you feel the emotion.
You can then incorporate more and more gratitude activities and exercises every day such as journaling, a gratitude jar, or a gratitude box to remind you why you always need to be grateful, then move to the next positive emotion.
12. Wallow In Positive Memories
Those times that you feel so bad that you desperately need to hold on to a good feeling are the times to reflect on past positive events.
According to studies done by the Department of Psychology, Rutgers University, reminiscing about positive experiences can bring back positive emotions relating to the original events and promote your well-being.
Whether it is time spent with a loved one, interesting places you visited, or significant milestones in your life, wallow away to remind yourself that there’s still a good side to your life.
13. Always Wait For A Few Seconds Before Reacting
Did you grow up hearing about counting to 10 before reacting in anger? That advice still works. The time you take to count can make the entire difference between blowing a conflict out of proportion and quenching the fire of anger.
Experts advise that you take a deep breath after every number to enhance your focus and help you calm down. You can then respond or choose to buy yourself more time before revisiting the topic.
14. Strive To Experience Positive Emotions Even Around People You Don’t Like
Have you ever run into someone you thought hated you only to be met with a smile? I bet it was a better experience than if it would have been a scowl.
You don’t have to be friends with people you don’t like or be overly nice to them but a little warmth and friendliness might even prompt positive reactions from them. Even if it doesn’t, you will have spared yourself some nasty emotions.
15. Keep Off Negative People
If you are spending time with people who are always dispensing copious amounts of negative energy including anger, sadness, criticism, judgment, catastrophism, and cynicism, some of it is going to grow on you.
Where you have no choice like in workplaces or when the negative person is a family member, building resilience against the negativity might be your only choice but where you can, keep your interaction with negative people to a minimum or avoid them altogether.
16. Avoid Dwelling On Negative Media
According to the British Journal of Psychology, not only are the majority of news topics negative but people also tend to concentrate more on negative media coverage, which in turn messes up our minds, mood, and happiness.
You can choose not to fill up your free time with depressing and sad news and make an effort to incorporate some inspiring and entertaining content.
17. Spend Time With Positive People
Just as the negativity in people rubs on you, so does positivity. Spending time with people who possess several positive emotions such as cheerfulness and happiness will also trigger upward spirals of good feelings in you.
This is a cue for you to keep people that make you happy closer and for longer to ensure that the effect is ‘nearly constant’.
18. Check Out Some Inspiring Quotes From Time To Time
“Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.” – American retired gymnast, Mary Lou Retton
This is just one among popular quotes about positivity that can influence your thinking, change your perception of things, and transform your state of mind.
Feed your mind with inspiration quotes regularly to encourage positive feelings.
Conclusion
We are all born with the innate tendency of paying attention to negative events and occurrences in our lives and around us. Despite this, we are capable of cultivating positive emotions to counter the negative ones in order to enhance our mental, emotional, social, and physical health.
There are numerous ways to create or increase positive emotions, and the list above contains some tried and tested tips to start you off.
If you are still struggling with negative emotions even after most of the above tips though, maybe it is time to seek help from a therapist.