How Positive Emotions Affect Your Health

By Aseya Me

Our perception and response to our environment and community plays influences our mindset, behavior, and perception about other people and the world we live in. We can be pessimistic, allowing gloom and negativity to haunt our every waking hour; or we can choose to be optimistic and see our stress and anxiety as normal human reaction to life's challenges. But there is more to human response to stress and anxiety than just having a "bad day." Our disposition not only affects our behavior but the state of our health, as well.

Extensive research has shown that people who are are suffering from depression and anxiety are at greater risk of having heart disease and other illnesses. Further studies also proved that people who are under extreme prolonged stress are more susceptible to infections like the flu and the viral cold.

In recent years, researches have reinforced the theory that the human mind plays a major role in influencing the way that our body works. Attitudes and emotions directly impact health and well-being. Being too negative in terms of one's thoughts or emotions somehow weaken an individual's immune system, which also confirms the mind-and-body link of health and well-being. The same study showed that people who are more optimistic have a 50% lower risk of untimely death than those who are pessimistic. Aside from a lower risk of premature death, having a positive attitude increases a person's energy and ability to handle life's difficulties. Having a positive attitude helps us deal with emotional pain and helps us attain peace, calm, and joy.

Although we cannot will ourselves to feel positive all the time, a number of techniques can be learned to help us reduce the impact of stress and anxiety. Using relaxation techniques based on Western, Eastern, and other traditional forms of meditation can help us reclaim a positive outlook. These techniques not only alleviate but also prevent psychological problems such as depression, anxiety attacks, aggression, and other stress-related illnesses like chronic pain, tension headaches,and hypertension.

The following are some of the useful methods that promote peace and relaxation:

- Visual Imagery – It involves visualizing oneself in the midst of a soothing and peaceful scene--- a forest, a beach, a stream, a lake, or being in the mountains. The important thing is that you visualize a scene that is beautiful and calm. Aside from picturing nature scenes in your head, you could also try recalling a special, happy moment in your life. The practice of visualization slows down the heart rate and breathing patterns.

- Meditation – This requires concentration or focusing one's thoughts. It is a often referred to as the act of "emptying one's thoughts of all negative thoughts and emotions." Meditation helps cultivate calmness and promotes the development of new and fresh insights into a problem and about life itself.

- Exercise – A good relaxation therapy that is mixed with physical exercise is called isometric squeeze technique. This technique is used as part of a systematic desensitization therapy for people who suffer from anxiety and panic disorders. The technique entails the application of alternate tension and relaxation on the body's 16 different muscle groups.

There are other practical steps towards building a more positive life. These steps include the following:

1. Reduce Stress
2. Get Plenty of Rest
3. Get Organized
4. Exercise
5. Eat Well

By cultivating a more positive attitude and frame of mind, we can overcome life's many challenges. Having a calm disposition entails the development of a coping mechanism that enables as to face life's many obstacles and occasional heartaches. Through the application of stress management techniques and a commitment to overcome one's personal problems, life can be more meaningful, worthwhile, and of course, happy as happy can be.

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The Value of Positive Emotions and Thoughts

By Mary Ann Copson

Thinking and emotion go hand in hand. A negative mood activates negative thinking and a positive mood activates positive thinking. Does it matter if you are in a negative mood thinking negative thoughts or in a positive mood thinking positive thoughts? Is one better than the other? Is there value in thinking and feeling positive?

Emotions Have Evolutionary Value

Negative emotions have evolutionary value. Negative emotions like fear, loss, and aggression activate the flight or fight response. When we experience negative emotions, we have a feeling of aversion, which sets us on course to identify what is wrong and eliminate it. Negative emotions and thinking are associated with a survival alert that activates a reaction to fight, flight or conserve - each reaction with obvious evolutionary value.

Positive emotions also have evolutionary advantage. They "broaden and build." Experiencing positive emotions increases our survival chances because positive emotions broaden our intellectual, physical, and social resources and build reserves for us to draw upon.

Experiencing positive emotions increases our drive for exploration and discovery and provides the basis for positive social interactions. When we experience positive emotions, we become more tolerant, expansive, and creative. The more positive emotion we experience the more open to new ideas and new experiences we become.

Negative emotions narrow our perspective to focus only on the immediate threat. When negative emotions are experienced, we withdraw, freeze, or protect. As we experience positive emotions, we feel safe and engage in active, playful exploration, and discovery. Negative emotions contract and positive emotions expand.

Positive emotions form the experiential foundation for mentally healthy people. Positive emotions provide a foundation for growth and exploration and build the intellectual, social, and physical capital for further growth and development.

When we experience negative emotions, they tell us to deal with what is wrong and eliminate it. When we experience positive emotions, we start looking for the virtues of what is happening. We become constructive, generous, un-defensive, and open to seeing possibilities.

Experiencing positive emotions gives us an entirely different way of thinking from a negative mood. A negative mood makes us attentive to threats in our environment and focuses our thoughts on protection. A positive mood moves us into thoughts about growth and development, exploration and discovery.

Positive Emotions Build Resources and Capital for the Future

Positive emotions build the resources and capital that will become the basis for growth and development in years to come. When we feel and think positive, we reach outward and broaden our resources through exploration and discovery. We are more creative, think quicker, and do not succumb to premature closure or other forms of superficial intellectual processing.

Depressed people experience what is called a "downward spiral" of negative emotions. Depressed emotions call forth negative memories that feed more negative thoughts, that feed more negative memories, that feed more depressed emotions. Breaking this downward spiral is crucial to stopping the depression.

Psychologists have found what they call an upward spiral of positive emotion. Positive emotions produce a different way of thinking and acting. The thinking becomes creative and broad-minded, and the actions become adventurous and exploratory. This increased creativity and exploration results in greater expansion.

Often negative emotions and thinking are taken more seriously because traditionally they have been believed to be the evolutionary backbone of human motivation. It was believed that people are motivated primarily to avoid experiencing negative emotions and that positive motivation was merely superficial.

But positive emotions are just as real, authentic and important as negative emotions and are equally important for development, growth, and success.
Positive Emotions Lead to More Successful Interactions in the World
Experiencing more positive emotion results in more friendships, stronger love, better physical health, and more successful interactions in the world accompanied by a sense of mastery. Growth, positive development, and creative and successful interactions in the world (i.e. mental health) may have their foundations in the experience of positive emotions and thinking.

Happy people tend to view themselves subjectively as more successful in the world. Happy people remember more good events than actually happened and forget more of the bad events that happened Happy people see success as lasting, personal and pervasive and failure as impersonal, temporary and specific. Happy people may lose a bit of realism but this does not lock them into ineffective functioning. Happy people are more likely to switch tactics when involved in a task that appears to be failing. In the normal course of events, happy people rely on their tried and true positive past experiences while less happy people are more skeptical. However, when events are threatening, happy people, more readily than less happy people, switch tactics and adopt a skeptical and analytical frame of mind. Happy people seem to deal better with adversity.

Happier people are markedly more satisfied with their jobs than less happy people. Happiness increases productivity and results in higher income. Happiness also makes gainful employment and higher income more likely. Adults and children who are in a good mood select higher goals, perform better, and persist longer on a variety of tasks.

Happy People Are Healthier

Positive emotions result in better physical health. Positive emotions predict health and longevity and protect people from the wear and tear of aging. Positive emotions strongly predict who lives longer, who dies earlier, and who will become disabled. Happy people seek out and make use of more health risk information. Happy people have better health habits, lower blood pressure, and stronger immune systems than less happy people. They endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions when threatened. Positive emotions and thinking prolong life and improve health. Happy People Are More Connected With Others

Very happy people differ markedly from average people and from unhappy people in one principle way - a rich and fulfilling social life and more secure relationships. Happy people have more close and casual friends, are more likely to be married, and are more involved in group activities than unhappy people. Happy people are also more altruistic. When we are in a good mood we are less focused on ourselves, we like others more and we want to be kinder and share our good fortune with others. However, when we are experiencing negative emotions and thinking we become distrustful, turn inward and become defensive about our own needs.

Focusing on Positive Emotions

Positive emotions undo negative emotions and reduce the negative physical and psychological stresses of negative experiences. Negative emotions tell you that you are facing a win-loss encounter and need to take steps to engage with the obstacles. Positive emotions and thinking allow you to see a potential win-win situation.

Positive emotions and thinking guide you to be more expansive, tolerant, and creative and maximize the social, intellectual, and physical benefits of the situation. Positive emotions and thoughts provide both the fuel and the raw material for experiencing more growth and development, more exploration and discovery, more mastery and successful interactions in the world. So, yes, there is a great deal of value in feeling good and positive thinking. Go for it!

Copyright (c) 2007 Mary Ann Copson

Mary Ann Copson is the founder of the Evenstar Mood & Energy Wellness Center. With Master's Degrees in Human Development and Psychology and Counseling, Mary Ann is a Certified Licensed Nutritionist; Certified Holistic Health Practitioner; Brain Chemistry Profile Clinician; and a Health, Wellness and Lifestyle Coach. Reconnect to your physical, emotional, mental, psychological and spiritual natural rhythms at http://evenstaronline.com

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