You can cultivate positive emotions. If you do it consciously, the benefits will reach each of your cells. And the well-being achieved will not only flood your body but will extend further, to the people around you.
We spoke with Nora Rodríguez, educator and author of more than thirty works on education, upbringing and personal growth, including A shake of emotions (ed. Boldletters) and Female Self-Leadership: How Stoic Philosophy Can Help You Reinvent Yourself and Impact Others (ed. Planet). In this article, he gives us some keys to enhance positive emotions in our daily lives.
How to enjoy positive emotions
It is possible to increase positive emotions when the heart beats with a different message than usual, when gratitude, love and appreciation replace complaint. We offer you the best practical proposals for you to achieve it.
1. Develops body sensitivity
It is the great challenge of the 21st century. david patersona professor at the University of Oxford, believes that it is increasingly necessary develop a greater perception of the internal states of the bodyfor example, perceiving what happens to us physically when we feel positive emotions in a sustained way, when we are with people we are not used to, or when we vary our diet.
Knowing the internal states of your body will allow you be more and more aware of the process of your emotions and to be able to awaken adequate mechanisms to stay longer with positive feelings.
2. Meditate with compassion
For him Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso, love and compassion are not luxuries, they are necessities. “Without them, humanity can not survive”. In fact, that is the key to suffering, because feeling isolated is what activates the inability to understand the perspectives and feelings of others.
For practice compassion meditation it is enough that the body is relaxed, the physical position does not matter: one can sit or lie down, and recover the feeling of love, especially for those who need it.
3. Accept moments of inner emptiness
It is the true route to find yourself. find yourself it has to do with coming to terms with your emotions. It requires honesty and sensitivity to understand the emotions of others. for the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurtipeace is not the result of reason, it is not reached through the mind.
The mind can’t find peace because it can only think in terms of time, in terms of past, present and future: it is constantly judging, weighing, comparing, chasing after its own vanities, its own habits, its own beliefs, and such a mind can never be peaceful. By activating the ability to empathize with others is how the path is found.
4. Calm stress with relaxation
Calm stress through relaxation will help you change the emotional patternthus maintaining positive emotions for longer, changing the heart pattern and managing to think more clearly, remember better and make more effective decisions.
For this you can practice rhythmic breathing surya anuloma viloma pranayamawhich is the alternate nostril breathing of yoga.
This type of breathing produces a great impact on general well-being by achieving coherent heart rhythms, which increases brain-heart synchronization. Do this by breathing slowly and evenly at a 10-second pace (5 seconds to inhale and 5 seconds to exhale).
5. Activate corporeal-emotional learning
Do it through the social smile, the one we give to others when we feel especially good, because with it we move the muscles of positive emotions. By moving the corners of the mouth upwards, we modulate internal mood states and induce the bodily correlates of that emotion.
6. Cultivate silence
it serves you to be witness your thoughts and emotions without judging them, activating inner attention. Silence can be practiced alone, but also in a group. Another alternative is the quiet weekend outings, ideal for shutting out the noise of the mind.
7. Get in touch with nature
Enjoy nature as often as you go to the gym, for example, doing . It is not complicated: you can walk to work, preferably passing through a square with trees or vegetation. Focus your attention on each of the muscles and bones that you are moving to move: those of the feet, calves, hips, arms… Also observe the distension or tension in the neck and back.
Listen to your steps and pay attention to your breathing. And the most important: enjoy!