Finally we can start to explore the last element of our Happiness Formula, and hopefully this will be one that we can really nurture and encourage to flourish. Because it’s occured to me, and I’m sure to you too, that so far we haven’t got a huge amount of ammunition to throw at the delinquent devils of despair, depression and downright disillusionment. Which nicely brings me to V.
V then refers to the voluntary variables that we can address to help us create sustainable positive change as opposed to fleeting intense pleasure. Yes yes, some of us still might prefer the latter, but in my experience it can get downright exhausting and potentially expensive hunting it down each and every day! Far better to achieve the slow burn of deep contentment.
V encompasses things that create positive emotions about the past, the present or the future. Much has been written in the academic and popular psychology press about positive emotions and it can be helpful to identify them, and also to categorize them into one of these three buckets.
Positive emotions around past events include nostalgia, contentment, pride, fulfilment and satisfaction. Moving into the present we can experience the positive emotions of calm, ecstacy, pleasure, joy and also being in flow*. Finally looking into the future we can feel the positive emotions of hope, faith, optimism and trust.
I’ve been working hard to avoid using the word ‘happiness’ as an emotion – for me it is on a par with the inadequate word ‘nice’. Frankly ‘happiness’ just doesn’t describe the essence of the emotion for me. It is bland and all-encompassing whereas we want distinction and specificity.
Of course if you are honest with yourself, you are probably experiencing any combination of emotions in these three buckets right now. For example you might be extremely proud of your three stone weight loss over the past year but now are frustrated with your current compulsion to eat vast quantities of double chocolate icecream with extra chocolate chips and fudge pieces. You may also therefore be doubting your future ability to fit into your new size 12 wardrobe and be pretty hacked off with the whole situation.
It’s also entirely possible to be bitter and twisted about your current relationship, to reminisce nostalgically and with fondness (and possibly through rose-tinted specs) about a former love, whilst also being incredibly optimistic about positive change happening soon.
Alternatively you might have suppressed a miserable past, rant and rave about how unfair everything is in your life and also have an unfeasibly large black cloud of pessimism about the future hanging over your head. Oh dear!
Clearly then it would be advantageous and desirable to cultivate and amass vast quantities of positive emotions about the past, your present and your future life. And that is what the V is all about. It’s about making choices (including Choosing Your Attitude) right now and moving your emotions in a more positive direction.
In my next posting then, we’ll start to focus on generating positive emotions about the past. I’m not a massive fan of Sigmund Freud so we’re not going to start exploring your early childhood and your weird and frankly disturbing dreams. Instead we are going to consider how to forgive and move on, to spot things that we are grateful for and to acknowledge them openly, and to keep tracks on the balance in our life so that our present has the best chance it has of being both uplifting and personally satisfying.
*More on flow later in another blog posting.
