Resilience_Lesson5Script

LESSON 5

Welcome back! Week 5 deals with emotions, both positive and negative. How can cultivating positive emotions like love, empathy, gratitude, and awe contribute to your resilience? How can you learn to manage negative emotions? You'll find out in this lesson. You'll work with your Practice Partner, practice managing positive and negative emotions, and share your experiences with your fellow students.

Video: Lesson 5-1 What are Emotions Part 1 (9:38)

SPEAKER Clay Cook:

This is lesson 5, managing intense negative emotions and cultivating positive ones.

In this lesson, we're going to dive into everything related to emotions.

And we're going to learn that to become resilient means gaining mastery of our emotions.

So they don't get the best of us, but also getting the most out of life by spending more time in a happy fulfilled state.

The first thing I want to do is jump into some quotes, some relevant quotes that kind of capture the importance of emotions.

And the first is by author Oscar Wilde.

And he said, I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions.

I want to use them, enjoy them, and to dominate them.

And this really captures the essence that emotions can help us, but they can also dominate us, and actually take control of our lives.

Daniel Goleman, who's the author of a book called Emotional Intelligence, he issued this quote, and it basically says this, if your emotional abilities aren't in hand, if you don't have self awareness, if you're not able to manage your distressing emotions, then no matter how smart you are, you're not going to go to get very far in life.

This is very true.

If we look at scientific research on emotional control, an individual's ability to manage their distressing emotions, as well as intentionally incorporate practices, activities in their lives that cultivate positive emotions, it's intimately related to their well being, and overall life satisfaction.

In order to have a productive conversation about why we need to manage intense negative emotions and cultivate positive emotions, we first need to define what they are.

So if big toes are for balance and our tongues are for tasting, our noses are for smelling, then what kind of possible function can emotions have?

Emotions actually serve many vital purposes such as learning, development of memories, our ability to communicate, gain information about our environments, and ultimately to motivate us.

So motivations are a critical aspect to our functioning in our behavior.

There really are three criteria that define emotion. The first is an emotion is a subjective experience that combines our bodily reactions and our cognitive reactions, such as pleasure or pain.

Let me go a little bit further into this component.

So our bodily reactions could consist of our heart rate, how fast or slow we breath, the temperature of our skin, whether we have butterflies in our belly or not.

Those are the types of bodily sensations we can experience that are attached to an emotion.

So emotions carry that bodily reaction. They also have an aspect of the mind, which we call our cognitive reaction, such as thoughts or images that come along with this reaction to a real or perceived environmental input.

The second component is that emotions are in response to a real or imagined event or object.

And are designed to give us information about those real or imagined events or objects. So it tells us or communicates something to us about our environment or about something we're anticipating in the future or reflecting on in our past.

The last component of emotion that defines it is emotions fundamentally motivate us to take certain types of behaviors or actions.

And emotions serve a vital motivational component.

They essentially up the ante to behave in a certain way.

And we're going to see how different types of emotions actually motivate or compel us to behave in different ways.

In many ways emotions get a bad rap because we stay really focused on kind of emotions that produce discomfort, pain, or suffering.

But really, emotions are essential to being a human and performing well in life, and ultimately getting the most out of life.

So they serve several different useful purposes.

First, as I mentioned earlier, they energize and motivate us to perform.

Feelings can serve kind of as an internal judicial system in certain ways.

For example, if you feel wronged and are upset, they compel you to act and defend yourself.

Hopefully in good ways.

So they result in asserting oneself.

Emotions also can energize us in a very positive manner such as if you're happy or

you're really excited, they actually cause us to engage in certain behaviors that feel good, that cause us to reflect on life as being really satisfying.

We also mentioned how emotions give us feedback about our environment.

They communicate to us.

For example, the easiest way to think about it is a lot of emotions communicate threat. There's a reason why we experience anger.

Anger helps us to defend ourselves.

So if we feel angry, we're having that bodily reaction, and we have thoughts of anger, they often compel us to defend ourselves in many ways in justified ways.

But we'll also learn how that anger could also get the best of us.

There also important for memory and learning.

Things that carry emotional weight to them are more likely to be recalled at a later time point.

The quintessential aspect of this is what's called flashbulb memories.

When something really emotionally intense happens, someone is likely to be able to remember that event with such intense detail at a later time point, a year, five years, a decade later, given how emotional tense the situation is.

On a more subtle level, it's really important to think about if we want to learn things and remember them, there has to be an element of emotion that we bring to the fore in order to retain the information.

If there's not much emotional weight to the subject matter, that's when learning is at its lowest.

Last, think about, emotions add flavor to our life.

If we didn't experience emotions, reflect just one moment what life would be like.

You'd experience kind of a numbness.

You would go through life without any type of up or down.

Now, what we need to do is figure out how to spend more time up and prevent how much time we actually spend down.

And that's what we're going to go into next is discussing different types of emotions.

In a very simple way, emotions can be classified as either negative or positive. Negative emotions are those that accompany somewhat unpleasant or aversive experience.

So your body, the sensations in your body are somewhat unpleasant.

The images or thoughts that are coming to your mind are somewhat unpleasant.

What that element of unpleasantness produces is it restricts our attention and ultimately narrows our behavior.

So we often think about negative emotions as narrowing our attention and our behavior. The easiest way to think about this is the negative emotion of anxiety.

Anxiety is an element of feeling uncomfortable.

And what we focus and narrow our attention on is that which is producing the anxiety. So imagine if you're stressed about finances and it's causing you to be really anxious, you're really narrowing your focus to actually solve that issue at hand.

So negative emotions can be useful in the sense of causing us to really hone in and focus on something to solve it.

Think about anger.

Anger is a negative emotion and it causes us to narrow our attention and ultimately narrow the types of actions we're going to engage in.

And that is to protect our self or defend our self.

If something is causing us to feel angry, what is that?

We're going to focus on what is causing us to be angry and we're going to try to make it stop.

Or we're going to try to just get out of the situation entirely.

So we can see how negative emotions actually narrow or restrict our attention, and ultimately limit the types of behaviors or actions we'll take.

Positive emotions, if negative emotions serve the purposes of narrowing, then positive emotions serve the purpose of broadening our attention and broadening our behaviors. So we can think about a positive emotions such as joy leads to greater play or partying. Pride for example, broadens our perspective, gives us greater confidence, and we're more likely to commit to taking on additional things.

Interest is a positive emotional experience.

When you're highly interested in something, it causes us to explore, which is a broadening of the repertory actions we're likely to take on.

So we can kind of see that there's value to both negative emotions and positive emotions.

Negative emotions narrow and restrict our attention in our behaviors.

Whereas positive emotions broaden both our attention, what we attend to in our environments, and ultimately our behaviors.

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Video: Lesson 5-2 What are Emotions Part 2 (7:52)

SPEAKER Clay Cook:

Each one of us experiences emotions.

Emotions have a lot of range to them.

They can range from being very subtle to actually ranging to be impairing and disordering to us.

For example, everybody experiences and society.

In a lot of situations, anxiety is justified.

It's a normal fear in response to life.

Whereas a panic attack or absolutely freaking out is when anxiety becomes too intense. So we think about emotions ranging from normal to impairing.

We all experience emotions.

I'm sure you've experienced anger before, but has that anger led you to grabbing a baseball bat and actually bashing in the window of someone else's home or car?

So we can all experience anger, but sometimes anger become so intense it results in highly problematic behaviors.

We all experience sadness.

You're going to experience it in life multiple times.

But does sadness reach its level of depression?

And often when sadness becomes too intense, someone can be called clinically depressed.

That means they have a really negative, saddened outlook about life.

Even happiness can range from what is actually normal levels of happiness to very exaggerated, impairing levels of happiness.

This is what we call, in a clinical sense, mania or a manic episode.

Where someone is so happy and excited that they can't even get sleep.

And they engage in certain behaviors that are problematic in terms of risk taking behaviors.

So it's important to understand the emotions in terms of their range, or a continuum they fall on that start with normal reactions to impairing reactions.

Our goal is to manage your emotions, so they don't reach that level of being impairing to us and causing problems.

Ultimately, compromising our resilience.

The reason why we would need to manage intense emotions is they can really make us stupid.

We've talked about in previous lessons about the brain and our response.

So we have the limbic system here.

We have our frontal cortex.

These two do communicate with each other, but when emotions get really intense, we can blow our lid, and we actually lose our ability to engage in rational, logical thinking. Think for a moment why the character Spock on Star Trek is so appealing to people. Who would they go to for good decisions?

Why would they go to Spock?

And when we look at that character, what's interesting about him, he allegedly didn't experience intense emotion.

So we he can maintain good, rational, logical thinking to solve problems.

This is where emotions really contaminate our ability to think clearly and make good decisions.

And the way I like to think about it is people do really regrettable things under the influence of intense negative emotions.

If you happen to drive your car, think about the concept of road rage for a moment. We all behave in certain ways that we later regret when we get upset while driving. Someone cuts you off or does something you don't like.

You might say a few choice words.

You might actually gesture at them in an aggressive manner.

And when you calm down you, you reflect on that and go why did I even do that?

That's how negative emotions work.

I'm sure if you've had a friendship or an intimate relationship with a partner, you've said or done something when you were upset that you later regretted and realized you could have handled yourself differently.

This is the impact of really intense negative emotions.

They cause us to behave in ways that are self defeating, make the situation worse for ourselves and others.

It's important to do a self-assessment of our emotional reactions and whether they actually fit particular situations.

So we're going to go over a couple of examples that highlight an assessment of whether an emotion actually fits the situation.

The first thing I want you to consider is a woman who may be grieving in response to the death of a loved one.

Is it normal for someone to be saddened and cry in response to the loss of a loved one? Obviously it's a normal reaction to feel saddened.

This isn't a situation in which we'd someone to exert emotion management and control. That's a normal reaction to a situation.

However, let's fast for two years ahead and imagine that the woman has lost her job, no longer goes out with friends or family, and make statements such as there's no reason to keep on going.

Because she's still saddened and grieving the loss of that loved one.

We can easily see in the latter situation how emotional reactions don't necessarily fit the situation.

Let's imagine another scenario.

And this one involves a young child with dogs.

In the first scenario, there's a big ferocious dog trying to attack a child.

Would it be a normal reaction, fear reaction, for the child to scream and try to flee the situation?

That's completely normal.

Now let's imagine that the child goes to different places and, even if there's a nice, cute, cuddly puppy, the child will freak out and want to flee the situation.

It gets so bad that the parents can't even take the child anyplace where there might be a dog because the child becomes so upset.

As you can see in the second part of this, that the emotion no longer fits the situation. And that's when there's a need to actually manage that intense negative emotion.

Let's take one more example here.

Imagine I sneezed in my hand, and you happen to be with me here.

And I went to shake your hand.

And you were thinking man that's pretty disgusting, but just to be out of social reciprocity, you extend your hand and you go ahead and shake it.

Would it be a normal reaction to feel kind of disgusted and be thinking about man I need to wash my hands so I don't get germs?

That's a normal reaction to that situation.

And so you feel disgusted, and you want to clean yourself.

What would be an abnormal reaction is if you felt disgust, you went to the bathroom, scrubbed your hand and were so anxious that you would catch some type of germ or disease that you had to re wash your hands and re wash your hands over, and over, and over, Such that you stayed in the bathroom for over 30 minutes.

There are people who get so worked up emotionally when situations like that happen that they obsessively do things over, and over, and over, until they feel like they've actually rid themselves of that.

So it's important here.

Video: Lesson 5 3 Managing Negative Emotions Part 1 (7:15)

SPEAKER Clay Cook:

We're now going to focus on how to manage intense negative emotions.

We've all had experiences in which, in the heat of the moment, we did something we really regretted later.

Our reaction flew out of the gate without any ability to catch it or stop it before it came out.

Our reaction not only surprised us, but others around.

And we end up saying things like how could I've done that.

What was I thinking?

Well in reality, you weren't really thinking.

You were actually overwhelmed with an emotional reaction.

You were actually hijacked by your amygdala.

Our amygdala is that kind of emotional epicenter in the brain that's part of the limbic system.

An amygdala hijack is a term coined to describe the process of losing rational, logical thinking when becoming emotionally upset.

And as Dan Siegel says, you actually blow your lid.

The amygdala takes over and dominates our thinking and behavior.

Remember when it's a negative emotion, it really narrows our attention and ultimately narrows our behaviors.

So we often don't engage in the most effective response to the situation.

We do the one that we feel most compelled by our emotions to engage in, which is later something we regret.

A more technical way of thinking about the amygdala hijack is called emotional dysregulation.

And this refers to a person's inability to control or regulate their emotional responses to certain situations.

We all have our buttons, our hot issues that cause us to become emotionally upset, but someone who's emotionally dysregulated is often experiencing a crisis.

A crisis is when someone experiences a very serious problem, but the solution isn't readily coming to mind.

So emotions are so high and distressing in crisis situations, that someone actually has a tendency to engage in behaviors or saying things that actually makes the situation worse in the long run.

So part of becoming an emotionally resilient person is to develop regulatory skills. Those are those things you can do to manage intense negative emotions.

In response to those situations that have previously gotten the best of you.

I want to go over a couple of metaphors that help to understand why we need to manage intense negative emotions.

And the first is called the rock slide metaphor.

So let's imagine your sole task in life is to manage rock slides, and you have one of two options you could take in your attempt to manage the rock slide.

The first is to be way up on the hill or the mountain, and as the rock slide has its first few pebbles, your goal is to stop it right then.

Another approach you could take is actually standing at the bottom of the hill.

And once the pebbles had started to gain momentum and turned into boulders, you're attempts are to stop these large boulders from actually sliding further down the hill and potentially crushing the homes.

So it just takes simple logic to realize that, in order to manage a rock slide, you need to stop it right when it's happening.

And this is the same as our emotions.

When we notice emotions starting to ratchet up, this is when we can be most successful at managing them, so they don't become really intense and cause us to engage in behaviors that we later regret.

So just as a rock slide, our goal with emotions is to detect when they're starting to gain some momentum, so we can intervene at that point, rather than way down the road when our emotions are going to get the best of us, and we have a full blown amygdala hijack going on.

The other metaphor I'm going to give you is from Jonathan Haidt, and he's a professor at the University of Virginia.

And his metaphor is the elephant and the writer.

Essentially we think about the elephant as being our emotional side, and the writer on top of the elephant is our rational side.

Obviously, elephants are very large animals, and if an elephant isn't tamed, the writer's going to have a really tough time being able to steer the elephant wherever he wants to go.

The elephant is like our emotions.

If we haven't tamed them or developed methods of taming them, they're going to get the best of us in certain situations.

And we will solely be at the mercy of our emotions.

This is why it's important to train ourselves as a good writer would do to his elephant. Of how to steer the elephant in the right direction.

How do we notice and manage our emotions and steer them in the right direction so we can end up achieving certain goals we want in life?

That's the metaphor, is think about you are the writer of your emotions.

And it's what you do to manage them that will allow you to get to particular destinations and achieve particular goals.

Ultimately, those things to add to your resilience and well being.

The first step to managing intense negative emotions is to increase our awareness of what we call motion provoking triggers or buttons.

So I want you to imagine you have a variety of buttons.

Imagine them to be red buttons.

Some are big and some are small.

The big ones are those situations or issues that really get you going emotionally.

They cause you to be really angry.

They cause you to be really anxious.

They cause you to be really saddened or simply stressed out.

Those situations that provoke intense negative emotions.

Other situations are smaller buttons.

You can think about them as a pet peeve, something that can't kind of rubs you wrong, but you ultimately can manage the situation.

When we talk about managing our emotions, we're talking about focusing and honing in on what are the big buttons.

Everyone when they experience an intense negative emotion, goes from calm to not calm.

Whatever caused you to go from calm to not calm is your button.

And so we have to develop awareness of what our buttons are.

And there's certain categories of buttons, such as certain people who may rub you the wrong way.

Being treated a certain way by others.

An unexpected change in a routine.

Certain events or situations, such as whenever you do something handling money it causes you to feel stressed or upset.

Or thoughts about past experiences.

All of these are different categories of our buttons.

And to the extent we're aware of what our buttons are, we can better manage those situations in the future with different techniques we're going to learn about now.

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VIDEO: LESSON 5-4 MANAGING NEGATIVE EMOTIONS PART 2 (12:21)

SPEAKER Clay Cook:

We're going to go over four methods of managing or regulating intense negative emotions.

Those are identifying, labeling, and quantifying negative emotions, relaxation strategies, distraction tactics, and self-soothing tactics.

Collectively, each of these kind serve a different purpose, but all have been shown to be able to take the edge off emotionally so we can keep a rational, logical thinking in place. Another way to think about this is as a rider on that elephant.

How do you stay on top of the elephant rather than getting kicked off or thrown off? So our goal here is to use these techniques when we are in the face of those certain triggers that we are aware of-- push our buttons and cause us to become really intensely upset.

The first strategy is borrowed from Dan Siegel, and the title of it is "Name the Negative Emotion to Tame It," and ultimately, just letting it pass.

Just as the emotion has arised, you can let it pass.

The simple thought of "This too shall pass" is often useful.

So the process of identifying, labeling, and quantifying emotions has been shown to lead to significant reductions in the intensity of emotions.

For example, at the first warning signs of anger, I may say something to the effect, right now I'm experiencing anger.

And I know I'm not the anger I'm experiencing, and this too shall pass.

Something simple as this can actually pull myself out of the emotional rabbit hole that I may be sucked into and often lessen the intensity of the emotion.

So I don't blow my lid, and I can keep that rational, logical thinking about what to do next to actually productively solve what's ever in front of me.

So it's really a 2-step process.

The first is identifying and labeling it, such as saying something to the effect, right now I'm experiencing anger, fear, guilt, frustration, or sadness, whatever emotion fits the situation, and the second piece is to remind yourself,

I am not the emotion I'm experiencing, and this too shall pass.

Actually letting it go away.

Simply noticing the emotion come, labeling it, and letting it pass has been shown to help manage intense negative emotions.

The next thing we can do to manage intense negative emotions is actually hitting the relaxation response or doing something purposefully to become relaxed.

Think about it this way.

Relaxation is incompatible with being emotionally upset.

All it takes is thinking about if you've ever gotten or received a massage.

How relaxed were you?

Have ever tried to become upset while you were getting a massage?

The answer would be you probably couldn't get upset because it is incompatible-- that sensation of relaxation is fundamentally incompatible-- with being upset.

So to take the emotional edge off any situation where it's starting to get really intense, all we need to do is intentionally engage in an activity that will help us hit the relaxation response.

And that is that ability to restore, calm down, and be collected.

So then we can proceed as effectively as possible.

The three best strategies are guided imagery through the five senses, progressive muscle relaxation, and what we call deep breathing.

Guided imagery is a process of actually closing the mind and going to a happy place, if you will.

Somewhere you've been that is a really happy or enjoyable place to be.

And what we do, while we envision this place, is simply imagine what we see, what we hear, what we taste, what we feel.

When we go through our senses, in this kind of guided imaginary way, we end up hitting that relaxation response, and we pull ourselves out of whatever emotional situation caused us to be upset.

Progressive muscle relaxation is quite simple, and it's a focused type of activity that requires you to concentrate on different areas of your body, but in a special way.

The special way is we focus on that region of our body, and we first tense that area. For example, if I was focusing in on my abdomen, I would tense it as hard as I can, and I would imagine, this is what it feels like to be upset.

And I would systematically then just release and let the relaxation of focus what, when we actually release the tension, that-- what takes over our body, that relaxation response.

Once I'm done with my abdomen, I would move to a different region of my body, tense up that area, hold it, and think about, this is what it feels like to be upset.

But just as you get upset, you can let it go, and release, and feel relaxation.

And as you release the tension, you're just focusing on that feeling in the body that is a positive sensation.

The last is deep breathing.

Deep breathing is a way to just slow your entire system down.

What we want to do is actually trigger that parasympathetic response that turns off our fight or flight response, and we do this by slowing our breathing down in a regulated manner.

So we want to focus in, breathing slowly through our nostrils, noticing our belly expand, exhaling out through our mouth, noticing our abdomen or belly actually go down.

We keep doing this over and over.

Often we do this 10 to 20 times, and then we assess.

Has-- have we successfully taken the edge off our emotions?

The next way we can manage intense negative emotion is through the use of distraction tactics.

Distraction tactics could be a number of different things that get us to turn our attention away from that which is causing us to be upset.

Essentially, that is whatever is the emotion-provoking trigger or button.

And distraction tactics are best borrowed from dialectical behavioral therapy and the work by Marsha Lenahan at the University of Washington.

She's developed an acronym that actually captures a variety of different distraction tactics, and the acronym is ACCEPTS.

And the A means engage in activities.

Do something else, and the idea is to get your mind on something else.

Get out of your mind and plug into your life in the sense of a different activity. Whenever we do that, we're able to turn our attention to something else, and the emotion actually goes away.

The C is-- the first C is-- contributing, to make a contribution.

Do something for someone else.

Often this would again pull our mind off of what we were stressed or angry or anxious about to something else, and the emotion goes down.

Comparisons is a different way to focus our attention, and we compare ourselves to someone else, often realizing that what's causing us to be upset is nothing because there's other people who have justified reasons to be upset.

So we compare ourselves to someone else who may be in worse circumstances, and that simple comparison can take the emotional edge off.

We can actually do things to produce opposite emotions, which is the E in ACCEPTS.

Opposite emotions is an activity, or some type of event, that you're trying to cultivate the thing that is directly opposite.

So if I'm sad, I want to do something that's going to make me happy. If I'm angry, I want to do something that's calming.

So we do things that are opposite, or antithetical, to the emotion we're experiencing. Another method is-- to distract is to push it away. We can push it away in our mind.

So a lot of people come up with different imagery based things.

So I can imagine putting my emotions in a chess, locking it up, putting chains around it, and then driving it out to the middle of the sea, and just dropping it off.

So I'm distancing myself from the emotion and thinking about something else.

We can also engage in what's called other thoughts, which is the T in ACCEPTS.

Other thoughts are things that just make you feel good.

So you can think about your child.

You can think about your loved one.

You can think about a vacation that you have looming in the future that is really exciting. So simply inserting other thoughts, other than the thoughts that are causing you to feel upset.

And then the last is the S, and that is other intent sensations.

Cause or engage in activities that cause you to feel other intense sensations.

For example, you can get a cold ice cube and put it in the palm of your hand which draws your attention to that.

You can go take a warm shower to do that.

You can go outside, if it's cold and rainy, to just take that emotional edge off.

So when you're trying to provoke an other bodily sensation that will compete against being upset.

So these are the variety of ways we can actually distract ourselves from whatever is causing us to become emotionally upset.

The last thing we're going to cover is actually self-soothing tactics, and this is really using your senses-- your five senses-- to take the edge off of whatever intense negative emotion you're experiencing.

So we're going to think about things you see through vision, you hear, things you taste, things you smell, and things you can touch that can take the edge off.

So what did you see that would be calming?

Such as focus in on beautiful things-- art, nature, flowers.

What could you hear?

The types of music you can listen to, or nature that you can listen to and notice that would help you take that emotional edge off?

What are the types of smells that are calming or soothing to your senses that really kind of deactivate that bodily response which is feeling ramped up?

Other things you can do, comfort eating or tasting.

We don't want to overindulge, but we can consume things that will help us kind of take that edge off.

And last, we can touch things.

There's many things such as soft things, things that are squishy, other types of things we can tactilely feel that can help take the emotional edge off.

So the last is to use a variety of self-soothing.

When you're really upset, take care of yourself.

This is the hardest thing for people to do, is give themselves permission to self-sooth. But it's one of the most important things you can do when you notice yourself becoming really intensely emotionally worked up.

We've discussed four strategies we can use to manage intense negative emotions.

And the goal is to not prevent emotions from happening, but rather, to manage intense negative emotions so they don't become really intense and cause us to engage in behaviors that we later regret.

And that is the whole goal when it comes to managing intense negative emotions.

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VIDEO: LESSON 5-5 CULITVATING POSITIVE EMOTIONS (9:55)

SPEAKER Clay Cook:

We're now going to turn our attention to positive emotions.

And any conversation about positive emotions wouldn't be replete without talking about the work of Barbara Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina.

She has been the most influential scientist and scholar on the topic of positive emotions. And she's developed what's called the Broaden and Build theory positive emotions.

And this is how positive emotions work.

Positive emotions, such as joy, happiness, pride, interest, love, amusement, and awe, cause us to broaden or expand our inventory of thoughts and actions.

When we expand our thoughts and our behaviors, we're more likely to build (or develop) mental, social, and physical resources for our self.

We feel better mentally.

We're more likely to establish healthy relationships.

And we actually increase our physical well-being.

What those things do is actually help transform us, meaning they advance our personal well-being, our growth, and our creativity which ultimately causes us to experience even more positive emotions.

So it has a reciprocal influence or a circular effects whereby we continue to broaden and build.

She's been able, through her research, to indicate that really positive emotions, when we intentionally cultivate them, have four effects.

The first is the broaden impact.

And that is positive emotions broaden people's attention and thinking.

That's been demonstrated.

The next is the build impact.

And that is, over time, positive emotions build important personal resources and increase our well-being.

That's been systematically demonstrated.

The other is the resilience impact.

That is, positive emotions are an essential ingredient to resilience, not just managing intense negative emotions.

That's good.

And that's part of being resilient.

But there's another side to that.

And that's cultivating positive emotions.

The last is the undo impact of positive emotions.

And the best way to think about that is, if negative emotions narrow and positive emotions broaden, then positive emotion should serve as like an antidote for negative emotions.

And she's been able-- Barbara Fredrickson's been able to demonstrate that through her research.

So positive emotions are often antidotes to negative emotions.

So let's go ahead and go into how we actually cultivate positive emotions.

There are numerous positive emotions that people experience.

But research has shown that there's 10 that actually cut across cultures and represent universal positive emotions.

And those are joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and the overarching emotion of love.

We can engage in specific activities that produce positive emotions.

And recall that and emotion is a subjective experience due to the combination of having bodily sensations and different things going on in our minds in terms of thoughts and images.

So the idea here is to intentionally engage in activities that produce a positive subjective experience, where your body feels good and is primed.

And your mind, it is in a healthy state to be more creative and take on additional things. So the first thing we can do to cultivate positive emotion is to intentionally focus on the small things in life, the small positive things in life not the negative.

So this is all about finding the small positive moments that are right in front of our face and paying attention to those things rather than missing them.

Research has shown that simply tallying the number of positive small things that occur throughout one's day, week, month contributes to greater positive emotions, greater happiness, and physical well-being.

So the first step is just to notice the small things that are attached to us feeling those positive, or experiencing those positive emotions.

The next thing we can do to intentionally cultivate positive emotions is do for others. So we call this acts of kindness.

When people engage in what are altruistic forms of behaviors or actions for others, they report experiencing significant amounts of positive emotions.

Whether it's a sense of appreciation, pride, joy, love, whatever positive emotion it is, those acts of kindness are the types of things that actually produce positive emotions. So many of us want to help others.

But we don't find the time to squeeze it in.

But when we do things intentionally to cultivate positive emotions, we're going to squeeze this into our schedules.

To act in the service of others, do something kind.

And this could be something very small to something larger, such as volunteer work. Another way we can cultivate positive emotions is to engage in activities where you experience flow.

Flow is a state of being fully absorbed in performing and activity such that time and everything else kind of melts away.

Have you ever done something and looked at your watch and, perhaps, two hours flew by?

That's because you were in a heightened flow state.

When we're in a heightened flow state, we're performing optimally.

We're willing to take on more challenging tasks and difficult situations.

So the idea is to think about what are the flow activities for you.

If you're a musician, that's a perfect type of activity to engage in flow.

If you're a writer, often these flow activities are things we consider as hobbies.

But when we get caught up in the rat race of life and multitasking, we don't find time to engage in these activities that produce a sense of flow.

So your goal is to find that activity that actually causes you to be fully absorbed in it, such that time and everything else just kind of goes away.

There's, perhaps, no better way to cultivate positive emotions than connecting with others in certain types of ways.

Socially is when people are most likely to experience positive emotions.

So our goal here is to fit in or make room to connect with others in fun and meaningful ways.

The essence of recreation, to engage in activities that are fun and exciting, is part of connecting with others.

So the question is, do you fit or make room in your life to connect with others in fun and meaningful ways.

I don't mean connect with others to interact, but I mean connect with others in such a way that you're likely to produce those positive emotional experiences.

A lot of times, we connect with others in more negative manners.

For example, I connect with a family member.

And all we do is end up talking about stress.

Obviously, that's counterproductive.

So when we think about connecting with others in an intentional way to cultivate positive emotions, we're thinking about the type of activity and what we're actually going to get out of that interaction.

So the goal is, figure out who you're connecting with and how you're going to connect with them to produce positive emotional experience.

We've already discussed that one way in which we can cultivate positive emotions is by doing kind acts for others, doing good deeds for others.

But there's another side to that coin.

And that is, noticing and observing the kind acts that others to do for us.

And this is the whole essence of practicing gratitude, paying attention and reflecting on life for that which we are thankful or grateful for.

And we've already discussed this in a previous lesson, that we can intentionally practice gratitude through journaling, letter writing, writing small thank you notes.

But these are all examples to cultivate that positive emotional experience of gratitude, developing a deep appreciation and awe for what life is affording you.

If you're like me, you might be thinking, OK, we've discussed two types of emotions, negative and positive emotions.

But should there-- one outweigh the other in order to become resilient?

And there is an answer to this.

And there's been research that has established the ratio of positive to negative emotions we need to strive for.

And that resiliency ratio has been shown to be essentially about three positive emotions for every one negative emotion.

So as we go through our days and weeks, we need to think about what we're doing to cultivate positive emotions.

And we've just gone over five different things you can do to intentionally, purposefully cultivate positive emotions.

Your goal is to make sure you're engaging in those two intentional practices at a higher rate than the negative emotions you're experiencing.

And if you can strive to increase your ratio so that it's in favor of positive emotions to negative emotions, you're likely to experience that resiliency benefit.

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VIDEO: LESSON 5-6 END OF WEEK 5 CHECK IN

SPEAKER Clay Cook:

That's a wrap for lesson five, and I want to do another check in with you.

After lesson two I did a check in, and hopefully you stuck with it.

And now I'm doing another little assessment to see how things are going.

And I'm certain for some of you that there's a lot going on.

And there's things that might be distracting you from continuing to participate in this course.

But again, I'm going to encourage you to stick with it.

We still have a lot of good content in the remaining lessons in order to build our skill set to become a resilient person.

So hang in there, stick with me, and I hope to see you in the remaining lessons of this course.