We often tend to think that happiness is nice to have but not at all necessary or even useful. Some even say that people living a happy life become softer and weaker. How is it possible then that science research show the opposite – happy people are more resilient.
According to Barbara Frederickson (2004) happiness is an emotion that helps us become more explorative and adaptable in our thoughts and behaviors. Cohn et al. (2009) found that people who frequently experienced positive emotions create resources, such as ego resilience, that help them tackle a wide variety of challenges.
Other findings show that positive emotions help resource growth and link psychological resilience with physical health, psychological wellbeing, and positive affect (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005; Nath & Pradhan, 2012).
To help you improve the ratio between positive and negative emotions and thus increase your resilience we offer you an exercise (as part of the Practice Resilience Programme), which will help you improve your emotional self-regulation.
Emotional self-regulation (also called self-control or internal control) is the ability to control our behaviour based on managing our thoughts and emotions as well as by improving our physical and emotional well-being. People who have internal control typically do not act on their impulses and do not give way to anger, jealousy, fear, panic or other emotions to negatively influence their decisions and behaviour. Emotional self-regulation improves communication, helps avoid conflict and also improves the sense of well-being.
The Mental Chatter exercise will help you achieve a deeper and better understanding of the quality of your emotional palette. You can also gain insight into the goals you prioritise and the values and worldview that shape your perceptions.
You can download the Mental Chatter Worksheet here.
The whole Practice Resilience programme can be found here:
OR you can also go through it via our training app Happiness Accelerator: https://www.happinessacademy.eu/uprazhnenia
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