Want to be happy, satisfied with life and have emotional strength? According to some new research that appears in the June 2009 issue of the journal Emotion, the way to do this is to focus every day on in-the-moment bits of happiness.
By taking time to stop and truly appreciate the good things that happen to you every day, the view from your window, a birdsong, the laughter of your children, a good joke, the thrill of a sporting event or simply whatever makes you feel joy and evokes positive feelings also helps to boost your overall satisfaction with life.
It also helps build resilience that will take you through tough times, and help fight off depression, manage stress.
As part of this unique work, 86 student volunteers gave "emotion reports" each day for a one-month period.
The subjects were assessed in terms of their life satisfaction as well as overall resilience at the beginning and then again at the end of the testing period.
Positive emotions predicted increases in life satisfaction and resilience at the end of the study; negative emotions had weak (or no) effects and didn't even have the power to take away from the benefits of the good feelings.
"Getting those daily reports helped us gather more accurate recollections of feelings and allowed us to capture emotional ups and downs," explains study author Barbara Fredrickson, a leading expert in the area of positive psychology and professor at the College of Arts and Sciences for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Rather than asking subjects questions about how much joy they'd experienced, the reports allowed researchers to get a more real worldview of daily variations in feelings.
But before you dismiss all this positive, uplifting thinking as impossible and unrealistic, recognize that the research isn't calling for you to deny the stressful, upsetting aspects of your life.
Or always be looking for that silver lining.
Instead all you need do is put a bit of your focus on what the experts call "micro-moments", those little things that bring you a good feeling for a moment or two.
The team of researchers found that experiencing average or stable levels of those feel-good emotions gave subjects the ability to handle challenges, even when negative emotions were involved.
The researchers are convinced that happy people are more satisfied with life not just because of their positive outlook - these individuals also have more internal resources for dealing with tough times and setbacks.
Fredrickson concludes, "This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go.
" Do that and you'll improve your emotional strength.
By taking time to stop and truly appreciate the good things that happen to you every day, the view from your window, a birdsong, the laughter of your children, a good joke, the thrill of a sporting event or simply whatever makes you feel joy and evokes positive feelings also helps to boost your overall satisfaction with life.
It also helps build resilience that will take you through tough times, and help fight off depression, manage stress.
As part of this unique work, 86 student volunteers gave "emotion reports" each day for a one-month period.
The subjects were assessed in terms of their life satisfaction as well as overall resilience at the beginning and then again at the end of the testing period.
Positive emotions predicted increases in life satisfaction and resilience at the end of the study; negative emotions had weak (or no) effects and didn't even have the power to take away from the benefits of the good feelings.
"Getting those daily reports helped us gather more accurate recollections of feelings and allowed us to capture emotional ups and downs," explains study author Barbara Fredrickson, a leading expert in the area of positive psychology and professor at the College of Arts and Sciences for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Rather than asking subjects questions about how much joy they'd experienced, the reports allowed researchers to get a more real worldview of daily variations in feelings.
But before you dismiss all this positive, uplifting thinking as impossible and unrealistic, recognize that the research isn't calling for you to deny the stressful, upsetting aspects of your life.
Or always be looking for that silver lining.
Instead all you need do is put a bit of your focus on what the experts call "micro-moments", those little things that bring you a good feeling for a moment or two.
The team of researchers found that experiencing average or stable levels of those feel-good emotions gave subjects the ability to handle challenges, even when negative emotions were involved.
The researchers are convinced that happy people are more satisfied with life not just because of their positive outlook - these individuals also have more internal resources for dealing with tough times and setbacks.
Fredrickson concludes, "This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go.
" Do that and you'll improve your emotional strength.