"Best Possible Selves diary. There are many ways to practice optimism, but the one that has been empirically shown to enhance well-being is the original Best Possible Selves diary method. To try it out, sit in a quiet place, and take twenty to thirty minutes to think about what you expect your life to be one, five, or ten years from now. Visualize a future for yourself in which everything has turned out the way you've wanted. You have tried your best, worked hard, and achieved all your goals. Now write down what you imagine" (108).
"It is easy to understand the benefits of negative emotions like guilt and fear. Fear functions to keep us safe by motivating us to avoid perceived dangers, and guilt functions to guide our behavior through moral decision making, and thereby helpspreserve harmony in families and communities. Imagine how dysfunctional the worldwould be if people did not grieve for their deceased loved ones, feel pangs of guilt when they cheated on tests, or become angry when they were treated unjustly. This is one reason we do not advocate a happy-only approach to life, but insist that bad moods are not only inevitable, but can be useful. Although negative emotions are unpleasant to experience, they often serve a purpose" (21).
negative feelings have a downside in that they can feed on themselves. Although embarrassment and anger are not necessarily pleasant to experience, they can be habit forming. For some people, anger is exciting, and they can learn to feed off the negative emotional dramas in their lives. For other people, self-pity can act as a blanket, one that individuals can swaddle themselves in for a kind of perverse security. The danger with negative feelings isn't in experiencing them -- we all do -- but in getting too comfortable with them, so that they rival our positive emotions in frequency and intensity" (23-24).
"People have values besides their own happiness, and therefore we must sometimes sacrifice our own short-term enjoyment to obtain those other valued goals. We might,for example, visit people in the hospital because we value their friendship and want to cheer them up, even though we find a hospital visit unpleasant. We do activities that wethink are required or the right thing to do, even when we don't enjoy them, in order to act morally. Here it is important to keep the different types of happiness in mind, and the differences between enjoyment and life satisfaction. Many valued activities, even when unpleasant, can increase our long-term life satisfactions because they make our over all lives better, even if they lead to less pleasure at the moment. And they may even bring greater pleasures in the future, because they improve our circumstances, or strengthen our relations with others. Regardless, we often do the right thing without consideringwhether it will increase our own happiness, and that should increase our psychological wealth" (232).
We have the freedom to think any thought or string of thoughts, therefore, it follows that we determine how we feel.
"It is easy to understand the benefits of negative emotions like guilt and fear. Fear functions to keep us safe by motivating us to avoid perceived dangers, and guilt functions to guide our behavior through moral decision making, and thereby helpspreserve harmony in families and communities. Imagine how dysfunctional the worldwould be if people did not grieve for their deceased loved ones, feel pangs of guilt when they cheated on tests, or become angry when they were treated unjustly. This is one reason we do not advocate a happy-only approach to life, but insist that bad moods are not only inevitable, but can be useful. Although negative emotions are unpleasant to experience, they often serve a purpose" (21).
negative feelings have a downside in that they can feed on themselves. Although embarrassment and anger are not necessarily pleasant to experience, they can be habit forming. For some people, anger is exciting, and they can learn to feed off the negative emotional dramas in their lives. For other people, self-pity can act as a blanket, one that individuals can swaddle themselves in for a kind of perverse security. The danger with negative feelings isn't in experiencing them -- we all do -- but in getting too comfortable with them, so that they rival our positive emotions in frequency and intensity" (23-24).
"People have values besides their own happiness, and therefore we must sometimes sacrifice our own short-term enjoyment to obtain those other valued goals. We might,for example, visit people in the hospital because we value their friendship and want to cheer them up, even though we find a hospital visit unpleasant. We do activities that wethink are required or the right thing to do, even when we don't enjoy them, in order to act morally. Here it is important to keep the different types of happiness in mind, and the differences between enjoyment and life satisfaction. Many valued activities, even when unpleasant, can increase our long-term life satisfactions because they make our over all lives better, even if they lead to less pleasure at the moment. And they may even bring greater pleasures in the future, because they improve our circumstances, or strengthen our relations with others. Regardless, we often do the right thing without consideringwhether it will increase our own happiness, and that should increase our psychological wealth" (232).
We have the freedom to think any thought or string of thoughts, therefore, it follows that we determine how we feel.
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