How Positive Thinking Builds Your Skill Set
The benefits of positive emotions don’t stop after a few minutes or once the good feeling subsides. The largest benefit positive emotions have is to enhance our ability to build skills and develop resources to use later in life.
For Example: A child who runs and plays outside outside, climbing trees and playing with friends, develops physical skills, such as being able move athletically. As well as the skills to play and socialize with others, a.k.a social skills which will allow he/she to communicate with others or with a team. In addition he/she will also develop creative skills, by exploring and examining the world around them. Thus, the positive emotions of play and joy allow the child to build skills that are useful and valuable in everyday life.
The skills that are created last longer than the emotions that initiated them. Years later, the foundation of skills created may lead to scholarships or may turn into a job offer. The happiness that lead the exploration and creation of new skills has long since ended, but the skills themselves live on. This is referred to as the “broaden and build” theory because "positive emotions broaden your sense of possibilities and open your mind, which in turn allows you tobuild new skills and resources that can provide value in other areas of your life." Barbara Fredrickson (positive psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina).
How to Increase Positive Thinking in Your Life
Here are a couple things that you can do to increase positive emotions and take advantage of the “broaden and build” theory in your life! Well, anything that sparks feelings of joy, contentment, and love will work. For the most party you already know what works well for you. It could be playing an instrument, doing yoga, speeding time with a certain person, or maybe knitting. However, adding these three things can help make sure that you are creating positive thoughts and really help you focus on you and your needs.
1. Meditation: Recent research revealed that people who meditate daily display more positive emotions then those who do not. As expected, people who meditated also built valuable long–term skills.
People who meditate daily display an increase in mindfulness, purpose in life, social support, and decreased illness symptoms.
If you are not sure were to start try this Video out it helped me; just close your eyes, breathe, and follow along.
2. Writing: A study published in the Journal of Research in Personality, examined a group of 90 undergraduate students who were split into two groups. The first group wrote about an intensely positive experience each day for three consecutive days. The second group wrote about a control topic. Three months later, the students who wrote about positive experiences had better mood levels, fewer visits to the health center, and experienced fewer illnesses.
3. Play: Schedule time to play into your life! You make time for meetings, conference calls, weekly events, and other responsibilities into our daily calendars. Why not schedule time to play? No one on there death bed ever said "I wish I would have spent more time at the office."
Block out an hour on your calendar just to explore and experiment. When was the last time you intentionally carved out time to have fun? We all know that your meeting is not more important then your happiness. We are rarely given the time to live, so do yourself a favor and block that time out. Give yourself permission to smile and enjoy the benefits of positive emotion. Schedule time for play and adventure so that you can experience contentment and joy, in the end it will only help you explore and build new skills!
I hope that you enjoyed this and start to use these positive thought skills! It will only help you! I want you to be the happiest and healthiest you! Try one or all three of these tips out and see what positive thinking does for your life!
Until next time,
Pistols...OUT!
xo
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