Positivity is probably a word you’ve heard more in recent years. It sounds good, doesn’t it? Upbeat. Optimistic. Happy. But it isn’t blindly thinking positively about everyone and everything. There’s more to it than that, and besides, always thinking positively has a darker side.
That darker side is around expectations and how we manage them. On the whole, of course, optimism is better than pessimism for our wellbeing. It’s better to expect good things than to expect the worst. But, and it’s a big but, unrealistic optimism can set us up for a psychological fall when our expectations aren’t met. That can lead to disappointment, feeling disillusioned and let down, which is not a recipe for happiness!
So, Positivity is a bit more nuanced and has ‘shades of grey.’ It’s certainly more, and deeper than just positive thinking. One psychologist who’s written extensively about this is Barbara Fredrickson. She came up with the influential idea of a ‘Positivity Ratio’, which is our ratio of Positivity to Negativity. Here, Positivity and Negativity are all about emotions. Positivity represents what’s happening in our life that leads to positive emotions like joy, satisfaction, fascination and love. Negativity is the same for negative emotions like worry, frustration, sadness and upset.
Fredrickson collaborated with a Chilean psychologist called Marcial Losada and published research which suggested that:
We need a ratio of approximately 3 to 1 (positive to negative experience) to be really thriving or ‘flourishing’ in terms of our mental wellbeing.
Most of us have a ratio of more like 2 to 1 (which they called ‘languishing’), and some of us a 1 to 1 ratio, which they suggested is heading towards depression.
It’s fair to say this is a somewhat controversial theory in psychology. However, it certainly provides some insight into why and how our life experiences can influence our wellbeing. When there’s a lot of bad stuff going on, or negative life events, which like buses can all come along at once, it’s not surprising that we can end up struggling with our mental health.
Another psychologist who has had a huge part to play in the science of Positive Psychology (the science of what promotes wellness) is Martin Seligman. He developed an overarching theory of wellbeing, covered in his book called ‘Flourish’. Seligman proposed that there were 5 factors which helped predict and explain your level of wellbeing, with the acronym PERMA
Here in the UK, we have something similar called the 5 Ways to Wellbeing as proposed by the New Economics Foundation (NEF):
- Connect (social wellbeing)
- Be active (physical wellbeing)
- Take notice (mindfulness)
- Keep learning (personal and professional development)
- Give (helping others / making a difference)
These frameworks are evidence-based and cover much of the same stuff really. You can focus on any or all of these areas to take steps to improve your wellbeing. Many of which you are familiar with you if you work with Becca and the Tonic Wellbeing team already.
If you are not sure where to start I’d like to give you some ‘Positivity’ tips now based on my experience:
1. Write a Positivity List
Firstly, I think it’s a great idea to take a bit of time (a few minutes) to write a ‘Positivity List’ of all the things you can think of that make you feel good and well as opposed to stressed, anxious or depressed. It’s your list, unique to you. It won’t take long. It’s very important to be honest with yourself. Try and avoid writing things which you feel should make you feel good. Rather, write down what really does make you feel good. What could they be? They could be to do with people, places, things you’re interested in, the natural world, the arts, sports, hobbies, crafts. It’s anything which occurs to you that leads to you feeling positive emotions.
2. Rank your list
Secondly, take a look at your list. When you look through the items, do some jump out at you as being particularly important to your wellbeing? Do any themes emerge? You could if you like rank them in order of importance, with the highest ranked being those which you feel have the most positive impact on you.
3. Reflect on your list
Thirdly, reflect on your current life experience and how you typically spend your time at the moment. Are those things that are most important to your wellbeing currently integrated into your life as much as they could be? It might be that some are and some aren’t. It might be that for a multitude of reasons you’ve forgotten about or just got out of the habit of doing those key things that really enhance your wellbeing.
This is serious and important. Your wellbeing and quality of life matters, to you, but also to others. If you’re happier in yourself, you’ll be healthier mentally and physically, and you’ll be nicer to be with. Taking steps to make improvements is going to have ‘compound interest’ benefits!
4. (Re)Design your life
What happens next is the ‘design’ bit. I like the idea of designing your life to be happier. Someone who wrote about this recently was Professor of Behavioural Science at the LSE, Paul Dolan. Paul’s book was called ‘Happiness by Design’ – well worth a read! His assessment is that life happiness comes at the intersection of pleasure and purpose and that it’s a good idea to have a bit of both. Some activities will prompt sheer joy, just from doing them in the moment. But some will be more ‘slow burn,’ purposeful and meaningful – not necessarily pleasure at the time but satisfaction from making a difference to others. This is very similar to Seligman’s Meaning factor and NEF’S Give factor.
So, the fourth stage is going to be designing your life (or just your day or the next half-hour) so that it promotes more wellbeing and happiness. You decide what to do, when. What could you do more of that you already know will make you feel good? What could you do less of that currently causes hassle and stress? With all the calendar and time management apps around, this is very easy. Just choose the app that you like best. Designing life in this way is very proactive; it’s taking control and responsibility for your wellbeing. Perceived control is massive in psychology. A greater sense of control (or ‘internal locus’ as it’s called) reduces the risk of stress, especially related to health risks, and it promotes resilience.
5. Evaluate and review
The fifth stage is to take a bit of time to evaluate what you’ve done and the changes that you’ve made. Has this made a difference? I’m willing to bet that it will have, but you need to be the judge of what’s worked and what hasn’t. It could be that one or two key changes have made a huge difference and other changes much less. The review part is tweaking the design so it becomes an even better fit for you. It’s probably a good idea to give yourself a bit of time before you do this, so your new timetable of positive experiences has time to bed in. Maybe look at it after a few weeks or a couple of months, whatever seems right.
Keep your eyes peeled for Part 2 folks…
