The impact of positive and negative thinking on our lives

Positive thinking is much more than just being happy or having an optimistic attitude. Positive thoughts can actually create real value in your life and help you build skills that last much longer than a smile.

The impact of positive thinking on your work, your health, and your life has been studied by many people, including Barbara Fredrickson.

Fredrickson is a positive psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina and published a landmark paper that provides surprising insight into positive thinking and its impact on our skills. Her work is among the most referenced and cited in her field and is surprisingly useful in everyday life.

Let's talk about Fredrickson's discovery and what it means for us…

How negative thoughts affect our brain

Let's say you're walking through the desert and suddenly a tiger appears. When this happens, your brain registers a negative emotion—in this case, fear.

Researchers have long known that negative emotions program your brain to do a specific action. When that tiger crosses your path, for example, you run. The rest of the world doesn't matter. You are focused entirely on the tiger, the fear it creates and how you can get away from it.

In other words, negative emotions narrow your mind and focus your thoughts. At that very moment, you may have the option of climbing a tree, picking up a leaf, or picking up a stick—but your brain ignores all of these options because they seem irrelevant when a tiger is standing in front of you.

In our modern society, our brains are programmed the same way – to react to negative emotions by shutting out the outside world and limiting the possibilities you see around you.

For example, when you're in a fight with someone, your anger and emotion can consume you to the point where you can't think about anything else. Or, when you're stressed about everything you need to get done today, you may find it hard to get anything started because you're paralyzed by how long your to-do list has become. Or, if you feel bad about not exercising or eating healthy, all you think about is how little willpower you have, how lazy you are, and how you lack any motivation.

Either way, your brain shuts itself off from the outside world and focuses on the negative emotions of fear, anger, and stress—just like it did with the tiger. Negative emotions prevent your brain from seeing the other options and decisions that surround you. This is your survival instinct.

Now, let's compare what we've said so far with what positive emotions do to your brain. This is where Barbara Fredrickson returns to the story.

How positive thinking affects on the brain

Fredrickson tested the impact of positive emotions on the brain by doing a small experiment. During this experiment, she divided her research subjects into 5 groups and showed each group different movie clips.

The first two groups were shown clips creating positive emotions. Group 1 saw images that created feelings of joy. Group 2 saw images that created a sense of satisfaction.

Group 3 is the control group. They see images that are neutral and do not evoke significant emotion.

The latter two groups see clips that create negative emotions. Group 4 saw images that created feelings of fear. Group 5 saw images that created feelings of anger.

Each participant is then asked to imagine themselves in a situation in which similar feelings would arise and to write down what they would do. Each participant was given a sheet of paper with 20 blank lines that began with the phrase "I want to..."

Participants who saw images of fear and anger recorded the fewest responses. Meanwhile, participants with images of joy and satisfaction recorded a significantly greater number of actions they would take, even compared to the neutral group.

In other words, when you experience positive emotions like joy, contentment, and love, you will see more possibilities in your life. These findings are among the first to demonstrate that positive emotions expand your sense of possibility and open your mind to more possibilities.

But this is only the beginning. The really interesting impact of positive thinking happens later...

How positive thinking builds your skill set

The benefits of positive thinking don't stop after a few minutes of good feelings wear off. In fact, the greatest benefit that positive thoughts provide is an enhanced ability to build skills and develop resources for use later in life.

Let's look at a real-world example.

A child who runs outside, swings on branches and plays with friends develops the ability to move athletically (physical skills), the ability to play with others and communicate with a team (social skills), and the ability to explore the world around him (creative skills ). In this way, the positive emotions of play and joy encourage the child to build skills that are useful and valuable in everyday life.

These skills last much longer than the emotions that initiated them.

Fredrickson calls this the "expand and build" theory because positive emotions expand your sense of possibility and open your mind, which in turn allows you to build new skills and resources that can provide value in other areas of your life.

As we discussed earlier, negative emotions do the exact opposite. Why? Because building skills for future use is irrelevant when there is an immediate threat or danger (like the tiger on the trail).

All of this research begs the most important question of all: If positive thinking is so helpful for developing valuable skills and appreciating the Big Picture of life, why don't we all tune into positive thinking?