How Positive Emotions Impact Your Health and Work

I’m quite excited to finally be finding a way to share with you the endless amounts of great information, research, resources I come across each day with my work. I’ll admit thinking about what to share first has been a challenge to figure out. However, an email from a client yesterday made my decision. I’ll share why at the end of this commentary.

You need to know about the recently published book called, Positivity by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson. This book summarizes Dr. Fredrickson’s 20 years of research focused on the study of positive emotions and why they matter.  The bottom line, from my point of view, is the Positivity Ratio which shows you are either thriving or falling victim to negativity and all of its impact in your life day to day.Fredrickson’s research reveals that our low Positivity Ratio (80% of people fall below the tipping point of 3 positive emotions to 1 negative emotion.) hurts our ability to change and adapt successfully to life.

According to Fredrickson, positivity includes a whole range of positive emotions. The top ten in frequency are; joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love.

Those of us that reach the 3:1 ratio (three positive emotions for one negative emotion) are healthier and have better resources to change and grow, as well as bounce back from adversity. Isn’t that what we all crave? Well, I know my clients do. And, this is how I thought to start my blog on this subject. Six months ago I began working with a wonderful woman who took the Positivity Ratio assessment and discovered she was well below the necessary 3:1 ratio to thrive. We had talked beforehand about it and I knew she would be low. She emailed yesterday and said she had re-taken the assessment and had completely flipped her ratio to the positive! She is feeling encouraged, informed and hopeful as she strives to continue to make improvements to her life. Love it!

If you’d like to take the Positivity Ratio test, simply go to http://www.positivityratio.com/ and click on the 6th tab to the left.  I’d love to hear what you discover about how positive you are.