Barbara Fredrickson

Positivity transforms us for the better. ... By opening our hearts and minds, positive emotions allow us to discover and build new skills, new ties, new knowledge, and new ways of being.

More than you perhaps may think, your ratio depends on your daily diet of negativity. Reducing negativity may be the fastest, most efficient way for you to increase your ratio.

As you raise your ratio above 3 to 1, a transformation occurs. You feel more alive, creative, and resilient. You have a palpable sense of personal growth and of making a positive difference. This is flourishing. It feels and is different from languishing. You’ve stepped up to a whole new level of life.

Positivity matters. And it especially matters during trying times.

Scientific experiments confirm that people who come to the bargaining table with a cooperative and friendly spirit—riding on positivity—strike the best business deals.

More of us can flourish. Indeed, greater numbers of us—as family members, neighbors, community members, and global citizens—need to flourish. We need more people in our homes, and across the globe, poised to make this world a more livable place for future generations and lift the many burdens of society. Flourishing people will make this positive difference. Gaining control of your positivity ratio is the place to start. It’s a win-win proposition. If you feel good—in healthy, heartfelt ways—you will do good.

By disputing your negative thoughts, you don’t suppress them, push them out of mind, or whitewash them. Instead, as you check them against reality, you literally dissolve them.

Loving is a skill. It takes practice.

Love is not something you stumble or fall into. While love can certainly catch you by surprise, like a sudden rain, unlike the weather, you can also seed and cultivate the conditions for love all on your own.

Love is not a magic bullet. You can no more expect to become healthier through a single, isolated micro-moment of positivity resonance than you can by eating just one piece of broccoli per year. Yet just as a steady diet of a wide range of fresh fruits and vegetables does indeed make you healthier, so does a steady diet of a wide range of loving moments.

Love grows best when you are attuned to the present moment, your bodily sensations, as well as to the actions and reactions of others. Sadly, when you are more attuned to technology, to-do lists, and mass media than to the unique and wondrous individuals in your day, you miss out.

Love is that micro-moment of warmth and connection that you share with another living being.

Love is our supreme emotion: Its presence or absence in our lives influences everything we feel, think, do, and become. It’s that recurrent state that ties you in—your body and brain alike—to the social fabric, to the bodies and brains of those in your midst. When you experience love—true heart/mind/soul-expanding love—you not only become better able to see the larger tapestry of life and better able to breathe life into the connections that matter to you, but you also set yourself on a pathway that leads to more health, happiness, and wisdom.

Loving is a skill. It takes practice.

Love grows best when you are attuned to the present moment, your bodily sensations, as well as to the actions and reactions of others. Sadly, when you are more attuned to technology, to-do lists, and mass media than to the unique and wondrous individuals in your day, you miss out.

A lack of connection is, in fact, more damaging to your health than smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol excessively, or being obese. Specifically, these studies tell us that people who experience more warm and caring connections with others have fewer colds, lower blood pressure and less often succumb to heart disease and stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and some cancers.

Levity is that unseen force that lifts you skyward, whereas gravity is the opposing force that pulls you earthward. Unchecked levity leaves you flighty, ungrounded, and unreal. Unchecked gravity leaves you collapsed in a heap of misery. Yet when properly combined, these two opposing forces leave you buoyant.

Love is that micro-moment of warmth and connection that you share with another living being.

Love is the momentary upwelling of three tightly interwoven events: first, a sharing of one or more positive emotions between you and another; second, a synchrony between your and the other person’s biochemistry and behaviors; and third, a reflected motive to invest in each other’s well-being that brings mutual care.