Keep a Positive Perspective | Arizona State University

Understand the favorable effects of positive emotions.
Learn how to cultivate, utilize and maintain a positive “lens,” or attitude, regardless of the circumstances.

“I demand that the world be good, and lo, it obeys. I proclaim the world good, and facts range themselves to prove my proclamation overwhelmingly true.” —Helen Keller, 1903

“We pay a high price for the disregard of happiness.” —Stefan Klein, PhD

“The actual secrets of the path to happiness are determination, effort, and time.” — the Dalai Lama

“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being Positive

Is the glass half-empty or half-full? Did you make a mistake or did you learn a lesson? Optimism is not a genetic trait, though certain personality types are thought to be more prone to view life and its challenges with a more optimistic mind frame (Klein, 2006)

Rather, it’s a perspective or positive “lens,” which is linked to improved adjustment and coping (Sweeny, Carroll, & Shepperd, 2006). Though life often presents daunting challenges, it also presents countless positive experiences that get overlooked.

Happiness is an internal process that involves a series of conscious choices. Making these positive choices entails having a set of skills. Well-being is achieved not in the absence of negative environments or personal malfunction but rather in the presence and application of assets, strengths, and positive actions.

Happiness is a willful experience. It involves creating good habits that promote a sense of well-being, appreciating positive experiences, and understanding that change is an internal process, not an external one (Klein, 2006).

People often feel frustrated when they place blame on outside circumstances they can’t fully control rather than working to change their own role in or reaction to the situation.

Being positive centers around how a person interprets her present circumstances. People regularly dismiss experiences that can easily be interpreted as positive and give disproportionate attention to negative factors or influences.

You have a great team of labmates but your productivity is low. What sticks out here for you?

Often in science and engineering, productivity is the linchpin for academic success and funding. But working with great people has helped you tackle the challenges of graduate school.

In regard to work, people will judge their experience on what they have “amounted” to or what they have produced, instead of the process of reaching their goal(s). However, the product is the end result, which is not an actual experience, per se. The process is how your time is spent, which entails the formula for a successful outcome.

How Positivity Works to Promote Good Outcomes

Positive emotions are associated with resistance to psychological strain and better coping in the face of negative experiences. The connection is not automatic.

Rather, positive emotions like contentment, interest, and joy expand your range of thoughts and behaviors, thereby increasing your personal resources (physical, intellectual, and social) to reduce negative emotional experiences (Fredrickson, 2001).

Positive emotions are associated with more effective problem-solving and positive reinterpretation of external events by means of an enlarged bank of resources and personal assets (Diener et al 2020; Scheier & Carver, 1992).

You might be thinking, “But I’m not a positive person so this doesn’t apply to me.” The good news is that positive psychologists hold that much of peoples’ happiness is under their control.

Further, they have demonstrated empirically that by engaging in positive intentional activities you can have similar healthy outcomes as dispositionally happy people (Lyubomirsky et al, 2013).

These simple activities, enacted intentionally and regularly, include the following:

Writing letters to others expressing gratitude
Counting your blessings
Performing acts of kindness
Cultivating your strengths (See Building on Your Strengths)
Capitalizing on positive events through celebration
Visualizing your ideal future self (See Career Goals and Motivation)
Meditating (See Mental Health and Wellness)

An important consideration is how cultural values contribute to characterizing each of these acts. For example, Western societies may associate happiness with excitement and personal achievement whereas Eastern cultures prioritize calm and interpersonal connectedness.

The Act and the Art of Happiness

Keeping a positive perspective, regardless of circumstance, entails developing a set of strategies that focus on the act and art of feeling happy. Happiness is not just an emotion, but also a physiological response to your thoughts.

Your brain and body are experiencing something that you interpret as a happy feeling. Just as you experience a chemical reaction when you are stressed or anxious, your body is equally responsive to things that cause a sense of well-being.

The trick is to assist your brain with this process. Remember that this is your process. Happiness is a creative process where you craft your own strategies based on what enhances your sense of well-being.

Some happiness tips (Bryant & Veroff, 2007):

Realize that enduring happiness does not come from successes defined by outside sources.
Take control of your time.
Act happy even when it seems difficult to maintain that mood.
Do things that engage your skills.
Be more physically active.
Get adequate sleep.
Attend to your close/important relationships.
Reach out to others.
Be thankful each day for the positive aspects of your life.

Being Mindful

Part of having a positive perspective is understanding that happiness is an emotion that involves conscious choice (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). It may be difficult to perceive happiness as something you choose to experience. Why would anyone decide to feel any other way?

Making such a choice entails being informed about your own emotional process.There are a couple of simple ways to become more mindful of how you bring emotion to your different experiences.

First, mood attention involves monitoring your emotions and their frequency (Salovey et al., 1995). “I always laugh when I take my lunch breaks with Seerat.” You might overlook this feeling if you don’t think too much about your lunch breaks.

Second, mood awareness refers to labeling your specific feeling in the situation (Swinkels & Giuliano, 1995). “I feel really good when Seerat and I eat lunch because she has a great sense of humor; it lightens up my day.”

If you are mindful about what you are feeling and when you are feeling it, you can place increased focus on your positive experiences and emotions, versus attending to your more negative feelings.

Savoring

“Savoring” entails attending to, appreciating, and enhancing the positive experiences in your life (Bryant & Veroff, 2007). You will sometimes focus on a positive memory or aspect of your life as a sort of “breather” from difficult life stresses.(Lazarus, Kanner, & Folkman, 1980). However, this is not savoring; rather it’s remembering a positive experience to cope with a negative one.

Savoring is paying close attention to your experiences and finding gratification in the different aspects of your life in the moment in which they occur. These moments don’t have to entail large accomplishments or exciting events. They often take the form of simple things that get overlooked.

The temptation is to ruminate on the negative aspects of the day that have the “biggest” effect on you. However, savoring means enjoying the things that bring you happiness, even in the most subtle of forms.

It’s the aggregate of “smaller” positive experiences that equate to the feeling of well-being. Savoring also helps you feel good for a longer period of time because you are fully experiencing something.

Often a small but satisfying experience can be overshadowed by a larger, more gratifying event or a negative situation. But if you savor those smaller experiences, they help you maintain a positive perspective because they are much more frequent than major milestones and are easy to identify in everyday life (Bryant & Veroff, 2007)

Self-test

Jeewon has been working 10 hour days in the lab, 5 days a week for over 2 months, and today is no exception. Over the summer, most of the university is out of session so she finds a great parking space.

She comes into the lab and is welcomed by a fresh pile of lab equipment sitting in the sink that has not been washed. Around mid-day, Jeewon enjoys her lunch with her funny lab mate, Seerat, who’s also generous with her home-cooked meals.

Jeewon’s supervisor is once again putting pressure on her about her lab team’s work. It has been slow because the lab equipment to do the mutagenesis has not been working properly.

Today he lets her know that because she is the lead on their lab team, instead of working on the symposium for the conference this week, he’d like her to help write the annual report for their grant, a task Jeewon is excited to do.

After her long day at work, Jeewon comes home to her excited puppy, who is finally potty trained! They go for an evening walk as the sun sets behind the mountains in front of her apartment complex.

Which parts of the day can Jeewon savor? Count up the positive and negative events. Which are there more of?

A. There are more negative events.
B. There are more positive events.
C. There is an equal number of positive and negative events.
D. There are no negative or positive events; there are only neutral events.

Affirmations

It’s easier for people to identify negative emotions. Maybe your lunch with Seerat got overshadowed by the meeting you had with your advisor afterward. You were probably drawn to the fact that your palms always seem to get sweaty when you meet with your advisor because you are nervous about receiving negative feedback.

These types of situations draw our attention because they are unpleasant. However, you can train yourself to maintain a more positive attitude because the brain has a natural mechanism for turning off negative feelings (Klein, 2006) When negative feelings arise, it will become easier each time to ward them off by replacing them with positive statements or affirmations.

Training your brain to feel happier entails letting it know what the instructions are for more positive thinking. Instead of focusing on the stressful meeting with your advisor, you can tell yourself that you will attend to the situation later.

Typically, a stress reaction is catalyzed by the feeling of having to do something right now! But you can always think through the situation later when you are not feeling so emotionally charged.

By repeating short, positive affirmations, you send the signal to your brain that your attention has been shifted. Your brain is like a suggestion box where repeated proposals get the most attention.

Simple yet effective affirmations are:

I can relax at will.
I feel peaceful.
I am letting go of tension.

The key is to notice when negative thoughts come into your mind and then greet them with an affirmation. When practiced, it will become routine for your brain to assume that the instructions for dealing with stress are to minimize it through positive thinking.

Shedding Unnecessary Happiness “Reducers”

One way to cultivate and maintain a positive perspective is to interrupt the patterns that reduce happiness. Leaving old baggage behind is one such strategy.

Maybe last semester you had a professor who seemed to favor the male students, particularly ones from his home country. And even though you often collaborated on homework assignments with many of your male classmates, your grades were always lower.

If you carry last semester into your current circumstances, you may feel unhappy or worried unnecessarily and/or unduly bias your present experiences. If you are prepared to deal with a similar situation in the future, there’s no point in anxiously anticipating it.

Another important element that interferes with a positive perspective is the feeling of fear (Klein, 2006). There’s a difference between being aware of a situation or interpersonal dynamic and feeling scared that it will come up.

How long will you avoid discussing the obvious mishandling of data by your labmates who seem to gang up against you anyway? Fear automatically provokes a chain of other negative emotions such as anxiety and doubt. If you can place fear aside, you can enhance your sense of well-being.

You can put fear aside by:

feeling prepared to handle difficult situations.
stating positive affirmations to yourself.
taking a break to relax from anxiety-provoking situations.

Unfounded assumptions can also reduce your happiness.You may be wondering why your usual lunch buddy, Seerat, has been taking her breaks with Ramon and Petra all week and not even once invited you. Should you take it personally? Did you do something to upset her? Are your lunchtime conversations boring?

Maybe it could be that she, Ramon and Petra are using their lunch hour to prepare for the symposium they are collaborating on for next week’s conference. Jumping to conclusions can unnecessarily incite unpleasant emotions.

Self-test

Which of the following activities can be considered positive action skills?

A. Limit Activities: Know what you can (and may need to) say “no” to in order to have adequate time for your top priorities, including your own self-care (and sleep).
B. Set Boundaries: Clearly communicate what you can and are willing to do (this is different than knowing what to say “no” to).
C. Recreation: You put off doing things that you enjoy if you have too much work to do.
D. A & B

CareerWISE Points

Focusing on the positives takes practice. It is a skill that involves personal choice and motivation, as well as individualized strategies that work for you. However, it’s something most everyone can do.

You have countless experiences on a daily basis that can make you feel happy. They may include enjoying a freshly brewed cup of coffee in the morning or talking to the kid at the coffee shop who always has something nice to say.

The basic knowledge that each day you go to graduate school because you worked hard to get there, had the talent and tenacity to do so, and have a well thought-out dream of being a professional in your field is good news! Don’t let the things that seem daunting draw your attention away from the satisfying and more numerous events in your life.

CareerWISE Tips

Notice, appreciate and savor the positive aspects of your life no matter how small they are.
Practice happiness. Train your brain to focus on the positives and divert attention away from negative thoughts.
Worry once and then make an action plan. Negative feelings often come from worrying about something that has already happened or will happen in the future, not what’s going on in the present moment (unless it’s an emergency situation).
- If it’s in the past, you’ll want to find ways to set your fear aside or translate your negative experiences into lessons or opportunities for growth.
- If it’s in the future, prepare yourself accordingly and then have confidence that you have the skills to deal with whatever issue(s) confront you.
Remember, most things in life are not life-threatening. Don’t over-dramatize or over-complicate them and make them worse than they have to be.
Staying positive helps you create more thoughtful strategies and, more importantly, enhances your enjoyment of everyday life.

References and Readings

Bryant, F. B. & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Mahwaw, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum

Charles, S. T., Karnaze, M. M., & Leslie, F. M. (2021). Positive factors related to graduate student mental health. Journal of American College Health, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2020.1841207

Diener, E., Thapa, S., & Tay, L. (2020). Positive emotions at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 7(1), 451-477. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012119-044908

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American Psychologist: Special Issue, 56(3), 218–226. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066x.56.3.218

Klein, S. (2006). The science of happiness. New York: Marlowe & Company.

Lazarus, R. S., Kanner, A. D., & Folkman, S. (1980). Emotions: A cognitive-phenomenological analysis. In R. Plutchik, & H. Kellerman (Eds.), Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Theories of emotions (pp. 189-217). New York: Academic Press.

Lyubomirsky, S., & Layous, K. (2013). How do simple positive activities increase well-being?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(1), 57-62. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721412469809

Naseem, Z., & Khalid, R. (2010). Positive Thinking in Coping with Stress and Health outcomes: Literature Review. Journal of Research & Reflections in Education (JRRE), 4(1). http://www.ue.edu.pk/jrre

Salovey, P., Mayer, J. D., Goldman, S. L., Turvey, C., & Palfai, T. P. (1995). Emotional attention, clarity, and repair: Exploring emotional intelligence using the trait meta-mood scale. In J. W. Pennebaker (Ed.), Emotion, disclosure, and health (pp. 125-154). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Scheier, M.F., & Carver, C. S. (1992). Effects of optimism on psychological and physical well-being: Theoretical overview and empirical update. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 6(2), 201–28. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01173489

Sweeny, K., Carroll, P. J., & Shepperd, J. A. (2006). Is optimism always best? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 15(6), 302-306. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2006.00457.x

Swinkels, A., & Giuliano, T. A. (1995). The measurement and conceptualization of mood awareness: Monitoring and labeling one's mood states. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21(9), 934-949. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167295219008

Tugade, M. M., & Fredrickson, B. L. (2004). Resilient individuals use positive emotions to bounce back from negative emotional experiences. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(2), 320. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.2.320

Uchida, Y,, Norasakkunkit, V., & Kitayama, S. (2004). Cultural constructions of happiness: Theory and empirical evidence. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(3), 223–39. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-004-8785-9

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