People spend their whole lives in search for happiness. Humans try to run away from negative emotions believing negative emotions can only bring negative effects. As reported by Richard Schoch, people are trying to suppress negative emotions by buying items they believe will make them happy such as selfhelp books or antidepressants (452). These people have the wrong idea of how to cope with their “negative” emotions. On the contrary, suppressing negative emotions does the opposite effect of what those people want to happen. Kristalyn Salters notes that “when a person tries to suppress their negative emotions instead of trying to cope with them, it causes a rebound effect that amplifies the amount of negative emotions being suppressed.” In …show more content…
To begin with, society as a whole has come to believe negative emotions are harmful. While this may be true to some, negative emotions are mostly harmful in extreme cases such as depression. What they do not realize is that being happy all the time is detrimental to a person’s growth as negative emotions. Constant happiness can lead people to be naive. Naivety fabricates the idea that an individual is immortal and nothing bad can happen to them. Susan David claims this can “lead people to engage in riskier behaviors such as the overconsumption of alcohol, binge eating, skipping birth control, and using drugs” (124). People in positive moods tend to rush their thinking and jump to conclusions. This can lead to an early death in which a person misjudges a dangerous situation. An example of this would be someone jumping off a waterfall into the water below. They may skip over the fact that there could be sharp, jagged rocks below because they were too busy noticing the scenery or the warm water than …show more content…
They are more likely to notice the small details in life that happy people miss. People in negative moods are also less gullible meaning they can easily notice when they are being lied to or deceived. Negative emotions can also improve a person’s memory and ability to reason. Susan David, a Harvard Medical School psychologist, states that a study found that “shoppers remembered more information about the interior of a store on cold, gloomy days than on sunny, warm days” (126). Another benefit is the improvement of reasoning. As a matter of fact, Susan David claims that a study found that “people with strong political views who were also angry chose to read more articles on the opposing view allowing for the chance of them changing their mind” (126). They also tend to be better at arguing since they are more likely to rely on concrete and tangible information and are less prone to making judgement errors (David 126). People in negative moods are more likely to be unbiased and will not automatically judge a person based upon first impressions. Furthermore, negative emotions are an evolutionary trait that helped early humans survive and prosper. One of the most notable example would be the feeling of loneliness. Loneliness is a trait that humans have developed to account for the need to reproduce. In addition, John Montgomery claims that “negative emotions are there to bring the
Award-winning author Mandy Hale once stated, “Without negativity, life would be amazing.” However, this statement does not always prove to be true. Today’s modern community generates a judgement that negative experiences will ruin your life, but studies show that negativity can actually result in positive change. For example, negativity can positively change teenagers actions, introduce teenager’s to more supportive environments, and help fix broken relationships.
People push being happy on society as a total must in life; sadness is not an option. However, the research that has conducted to the study of happiness speaks otherwise. In this essay Sharon Begley's article "Happiness: Enough Already" critiques and analyzes societies need to be happy and the motivational affects it has on life. Begley believes that individuals do not always have to be happy, and being sad is okay and even good for us. She brings in the research of other professionals to build her claim that extreme constant happiness is not good for people. I strongly agree that we need to experience sadness to build motivation in life and character all around.
This is seemingly the case in the time period prior to the collapse of society. For example, when a character named “[Jeevan] reached Allan Gardens Park… he found himself blindsided by an unexpected joy. Arthur died… there’s nothing to be happy about. But there was… now he was certain, absolutely certain that he wanted to be a paramedic” (11). When Jeevan finally realized what he wanted to be, his true calling, he was overwhelmed with joy. Even though somebody had just died, all he could feel was happiness because he found something within himself. When Arthur was beginning to reflect upon his life, “He stared at his crown and ran through a secret list of everything that was good… Dancing with Clark when he was eighteen… Tanya sipping wine, her smile… Riding in his father’s snowplow when he was nine, the time [he] told a joke and his father and his little brother couldn’t stop laughing, the sheer joy he’d felt at that moment” (327). All of these different things brought Arthur happiness and eventually sadness at some point in his life, showing that nothing can keep you happy forever. The meaning of happiness is ever-changing. Since happiness was based off of how much you had, people had the ability to manipulate it by obtaining more
If someone thinks negatively towards something the outcome will not be good, and vice versa. Thinking you can achieve the American dream is a major key in doing so, and some Americans are already on the right track. In the U.S., a survey showed that 36 percent of Americans say they have achieved the dream, and another 46 percent believe they are on the path of achieving it. It is not so easy, though, to always look on the bright side. Sometimes it seems as if nothing is going right; that is when negativity occurs. People can argue that mindset has little impact on the outcome, or that it does not matter how positive a person is because some things are just not meant to be. An article, however, proves this wrong. The paper argues how negative emotions prevent humans from flourishing; it also states, “if your ratio of positive to negative emotions is greater than 2.9013 to one, you will flourish both physically and psychologically.” If a person believes in themselves, they are more likely to accomplish their
Society pressure themselves to be happy; they often ask questions like, “does that make you happy?” What they fail to understand is that sometimes doing the right thing, for the moment, might not seem to bring happiness in one’s life, but after trekking the ups and downs of life, happiness might be waiting on the other side. From time to time people also judge good and bad through happiness. “If something is good, we feel good. If something is
...rson’s emotions allows them to be optimistic or pessimistic about various experiences they may have to deal with. “People are not aware of the fact that their defenses are more likely to be triggered by intense rather than mild suffering, thus they mispredict their own emotional reactions” (Gilbert 140) to different experiences which causes them to fail to create better responses to a similar situation in the future. An individual has not only the ability to perceive the world but also the ability to alter their perception of it. Simply put an individual can change situations and outcomes by the way in which they look at them.
However, happiness also takes into account a wide range of other aspects of our lives, including our thoughts and actions, and even genetics. Therefore, happiness should be defined as the amalgamation of how we think and act, and how we interpret our experiences as positive or negative. What this means is that in order to become happier, we must simply force ourselves to become more optimistic. This is easier said than done, however. In order to have a noticeable increase in happiness, people must be willing to make lifestyle changes in addition to changing their mindset. However, the difference between optimism and delusion is a fine line, so people must be cautious to not exaggerate the positive parts of an experience or become overly optimistic. If we practice seeking out the positive views of our circumstances, with time we will find ourselves happier than
All of our emotions play a big role in our lives. Even though it does not feel like it at the moment, negative feelings can be a good thing.If we never become sad, angry, or scared we would not be able to appreciate the true value of happiness, we would only focus on ourselves and happiness, and we would become less alert to threats and dangerous situations around us.
Emotion is often thought of as simply how one feels, but it is much more complex than that. Emotions have almost evolved as extensions of survival mechanisms and are essential to managing life (Schmidt, 2017). Without emotions, we wouldn’t be able to experience feelings in our lives. We would not get excited and nervous for the birth of our first child, we would not get angry when something we love gets destroyed, and we would not be happy when life is going great. Without emotions we wouldn’t be able to successfully learn and complete the learning cycle. Emotions, both good and bad, help us navigate the learning cycle and are influential to how we make decisions, reflect upon those decisions, and create new ideas for the future. According
The emotions associated by an environment enable personal growth over a lifetime. Negative emotions like hopelessness, anger and sadness all influence and alter people deeply, leaving them
Humans gravitate towards safe, loving, and happy experiences. But sometimes it’s difficult to be positive, especially when experiences feel overwhelming. In recent years, there has been a lot of research conducted on regulating emotions. With these strategies, we can learn how to control our feelings. There are two types of strategies: savoring and dampening. Savoring is the idea of noticing and relishing experiences, hardwiring your brain to focus on positivity. Dampening, on the other hang, is the act of suppressing or down-regulating positive emotions, out of fear, shyness, or modesty. There are many ways to promote positive emotions, but the focus of this paper will be on the differing implementation strategies. While there’s consensus amongst scholarship that savoring and dampening are effective ways in influencing life satisfaction, the scholars differ in their approaches leading to their conclusions.
Notably positive emotions have played a prudent role in my lifestyle, how I choose to go about living my life and interacting with others, and the decision making process. Maintaining an emotional balance can seem like a challenge but, the belief in my own lifestyle has always been keeping a positive attitude or composure will eventually lead to a more beneficial outcome on a variety of platforms over time regardless everything has a silver lining. According to the article ‘Positive Emotions’, published by Courtney Ackerman on Positive Psychology Program, “The effects of these emotions are in sharp contrast to the effects of negative emotions, or those experienced in a dangerous situation (e.g., fear, terror, anxiety), which usually have the effect of narrowing our focus and limiting our myriad options to the one or two” (Courtney A, 2018.). The author is trying to illustrate the fact that, without maintaining a positive attitude or composure, this can vastly change our pervasive thoughts to just a limited few in which a negative outcome can be created and a poor decision process that may follow leading to consequential or wrong actions. Emotions aren’t just something we feel, but they play a pervasive role in our lifestyles and our determination of right from wrong,
Emotional health plays a hand in many parts of people’s lives. When you maintain good emotional health it can play an important role in your school, work, relationships and physical health. Researchers used to believe that our happiness came from being successful. To the contrary, research has since shown it is just the opposite. A person with a positive outlook is more likely to set goals and work towards them. People tend to attract people with a like-mined outlook and attitude, therefore a happy person is likely to be surrounded by other happy people. This creates a positive circle of support and healthy relationships. These are key building blocks of success. People with good emotional health have positive coping skills to deal
When we are young children, we are introduced to the concept of "living happily ever after". This is a fairy-tale emotional state of absolute happiness, where nothing really happens, and nothing even seems to matter. It is a state of feeling good all the time. In fairy tales, this feeling is usually found in fulfilling marriages, royal castles, singing birds and laughing children. In real life, an even-keeled mood is more psychologically healthy than a mood in which you frequently achieve great heights of happiness. Furthermore, when you ask people what makes their lives worth living, they rarely mention their mood. They are more likely to talk about what they find meaningful, such as their work or relationships. Research suggests that if you focus too much on trying to feel good all the time, you’ll actually undermine your ability to ever feel good because no amount of feeling good will be satisfying to you. If feeling good all the time were the only requirement for happiness, then a person who uses cocaine every day would be extremely happy. In our endless struggle for more money, more love and more security, we have forgotten the most fundamental fact: happiness is not caused by possessions or social positions, and can in fact be experienced in any daily activity. We have made happiness a utopia: expensive, complicated, and unreachable.
The world is made up of optimist and pessimists, and the survival of human beings and our well-being requires a balance between optimism and pessimism. Disproportionate pessimism makes life unbearable; however, too much optimism can advance to dangerously hazardous behaviors. The Optimism and pessimism approach is expecting a positive or negative future outcome, a recognizable way of reasoning is best conceptualized as continuity with many amounts of optimism and pessimism. Successful living requires a great balance between optimism and pessimism. Too much optimism may embolden one to take uncalculated risks that will lead to inadvertent and reckless behaviors, which may conclude in a catastrophe. On the contrary, worrying too much about