Attracting Abundance
The Law
Two Doors to Success
Happiness - XIII
Happiness - XIII
Now that we have seen the strong influence happiness and well-being have on the quality of our life as an individual, as a community and nation, which has been validated by various economic and scientific studies and research I have referred to in my previous posts, it is imperative that we adopt practices and behaviors which promote positivity and therefore happiness and well-being. I will not be far off from the mark when I say that the mass of cells beneath our skull - our brain - is trainable and changeable to promote thoughts and behaviors to facilitate positivity, irrespective of our current reality. There is a conflict in our perception on what comes first - positivity or happiness and well being. The question id often raised and debated as to which is the cause and which is the effect? I opine that they become mutually causative once we start the loop. But to start the loop, we will need to deliberately nurture positivity.
Changing the entrenched emotional habits is possible but difficult. Mere uttering of wisdoms such as "think positive" or "be happy" or some such does not help. Only willpower is not sufficient to change the emotional habits. Your habitual patterns of thought has created your emotional habits. Your thought patterns emerge out of the paradigms you have picked up along the way. These have happened over your life time and are solidly entrenched. But the good news is that it has been scientifically established that if you are able to change your thought patterns your emotional patterns will change too. This is true for both positive and negative emotions. Another good news is that you are not fully determined by your genes. It is true that science has demonstrated that the genes that you have inherited from your family tree have vital influence on your positivity patterns. But its impact is limited to anywhere between 34% to 50% of your habitual though patterns. The rest of it is partly determined by your circumstances - your life experiences, environmental signals etc - and how you choose to think and act each day. The revelation that the brain is plastic and moldable gives lot of cheer and courage to tray and retrain the brain and make beneficial new neural connections. These new neural connection insures that you do not relapse back to the debilitating habits when you are off guard. For once the fresh neural connections are made and stabilized, the subconscious brain takes over.
The emotional state of happiness or positivity or well-being, is an essential requirement for attracting abundance. It is this state which broadens your mind and heart, It is in this state that you get more solutions to a problem. It is from this state that you start seeing opportunities. And it is from this state that you start to become resilient enabling you to get up after falling down and recovering from negative consequences and experiences. And it is in this state that you communicate well and attract the right people. These are the all the resources that you need to create abundance.
Before I commence writing on the actions necessary to foster positivity, I will introduce two personalities - both scientists in their respective fields - who had joined together to arrive at a number which denotes the "tipping point" for positivity. This number is a ratio of the positive in a system and negative in a system in an individual's life and is popularly known as Losada number or positivity ratio.
Formerly, as Director of the Center for Advanced Research (CFAR) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he conducted studies on the interaction dynamics and productivity of business teams that led him to implement a unique, scientifically based, approach to develop high performance teams. His pioneering work on applications of nonlinear dynamics to team interaction processes has been published in a number of prestigious scientific journals, and he has made several other contributions that have earned him worldwide recognition)
The study which finally brought the positivity ratio to its current level of popularity came from the field of positive psychology, from the research of Barbara Fredrickson. She found that college students with a positivity ratio above 3 were significantly more likely to have high mental and social health. (Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D. earned her undergraduate degree from Carleton College and her doctorate from Stanford University. She is currently Kenan Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with appointments in Psychology and the Kenan-Flagler School of Business. She is also Director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (a.k.a., PEP Lab). Fredrickson is a leading scholar within social psychology, affective science, and positive psychology, and has received more than 16 consecutive years of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Her research and teaching have been recognized with numerous honors, including, in 2000, the American Psychological Association's inaugural Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology, in 2008, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology's Career Trajectory Award, and in 2013, the inaugural Christopher Peterson Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the International Positive Psychology Association. Her work is cited widely and she is regularly invited to give keynotes nationally and internationally.)
Changing the entrenched emotional habits is possible but difficult. Mere uttering of wisdoms such as "think positive" or "be happy" or some such does not help. Only willpower is not sufficient to change the emotional habits. Your habitual patterns of thought has created your emotional habits. Your thought patterns emerge out of the paradigms you have picked up along the way. These have happened over your life time and are solidly entrenched. But the good news is that it has been scientifically established that if you are able to change your thought patterns your emotional patterns will change too. This is true for both positive and negative emotions. Another good news is that you are not fully determined by your genes. It is true that science has demonstrated that the genes that you have inherited from your family tree have vital influence on your positivity patterns. But its impact is limited to anywhere between 34% to 50% of your habitual though patterns. The rest of it is partly determined by your circumstances - your life experiences, environmental signals etc - and how you choose to think and act each day. The revelation that the brain is plastic and moldable gives lot of cheer and courage to tray and retrain the brain and make beneficial new neural connections. These new neural connection insures that you do not relapse back to the debilitating habits when you are off guard. For once the fresh neural connections are made and stabilized, the subconscious brain takes over.
The emotional state of happiness or positivity or well-being, is an essential requirement for attracting abundance. It is this state which broadens your mind and heart, It is in this state that you get more solutions to a problem. It is from this state that you start seeing opportunities. And it is from this state that you start to become resilient enabling you to get up after falling down and recovering from negative consequences and experiences. And it is in this state that you communicate well and attract the right people. These are the all the resources that you need to create abundance.
Before I commence writing on the actions necessary to foster positivity, I will introduce two personalities - both scientists in their respective fields - who had joined together to arrive at a number which denotes the "tipping point" for positivity. This number is a ratio of the positive in a system and negative in a system in an individual's life and is popularly known as Losada number or positivity ratio.
The first suspicion of a positivity ratio came from the field of marital stability and relationship analysis, from the research of John Gottman. Over the course of dozens of studies and thousands of observations, he gained the ability to predict whether or not a couple would divorce with over 90% accuracy. A key factor of that prediction was the ratio of positive expressions to negative expressions.
The second suspicion of a positivity ratio came from the field of organizational psychology, from the research of Marcial Losada. Adopting Gottman’s coding methodology for business teams, Losada observed teams of eight while they developed strategic plans. Once again, the ratio of positive expressions to negative expressions was highly predictive of team success, as judged by both hard numbers like profitability, and soft numbers like evaluations by colleagues and superiors. (Dr. Losada is the founder and executive director of Losada Line Consulting, an organization that specializes in developing high performance teams. He currently consults with executives and their teams at several corporations in the U.S. and around the world.
The study which finally brought the positivity ratio to its current level of popularity came from the field of positive psychology, from the research of Barbara Fredrickson. She found that college students with a positivity ratio above 3 were significantly more likely to have high mental and social health. (Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph.D. earned her undergraduate degree from Carleton College and her doctorate from Stanford University. She is currently Kenan Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, with appointments in Psychology and the Kenan-Flagler School of Business. She is also Director of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory (a.k.a., PEP Lab). Fredrickson is a leading scholar within social psychology, affective science, and positive psychology, and has received more than 16 consecutive years of research funding from the National Institutes of Health. Her research and teaching have been recognized with numerous honors, including, in 2000, the American Psychological Association's inaugural Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology, in 2008, the Society for Experimental Social Psychology's Career Trajectory Award, and in 2013, the inaugural Christopher Peterson Gold Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the International Positive Psychology Association. Her work is cited widely and she is regularly invited to give keynotes nationally and internationally.)
Namaste
Prabir
No comments:
Post a Comment