From an interview in The Sun with psychologist Barbara Fredrickson:
“[Some] researchers have found that the number of positive emotions a person feels predicts his or her satisfaction with life. What we’ve done is uncover how positive emotions actually cause us to be happier by helping us build our resources for managing day-to-day life.
When we have better resources, we emerge from adverse situations feeling more satisfied with the outcome.”
Fredrickson continues:
[What my colleagues and I have] found is that we should be focusing on how we feel from day to day, not on how we can become happy with life in general. If you focus on day-to-day feelings, you end up building your resources and becoming your best version of yourself. Down the road, you’ll be happier with life. Rather than staring down happiness as our goal and asking ourselves, “How do I get there?” we should be thinking about how to create positive emotions in the moment.
Fredrickson was interviewed in connection with the book that summarizes her findings from twenty years of research into positive emotions, Positivity. Ironically, the website for the book shows signs of desperation in the marketing department (never a good sign to see “lab-tested” and “tipping point” in the same paragraph) but the interview itself is an interesting read.
