Boost your emotional wellbeing for better psychological health
Your emotions count!
“If you experience a healthy dose of positivity and you can sustain it, it can also empower and energize you to deal with adversity in a more constructive way. In that sense, resilience and a positive outlook are highly intertwined. If we cultivate our ability to sustain positivity, we are simultaneously cultivating our ability to bounce back from negativity.”
-Pelin Kesebir ( Centre for Healthy minds)
Latest research from the centre of healthy minds run by Richard Davidson builds on his fascinating book the emotional life of your brain. In the book he talks about the links between our emotions (our affect) and our wellbeing. Much of mainstream mindfulness focuses more towards the focus element of mindfulness and our ability to manage our attention. What I love about Richie Davidson’s work is that it focuses on our emotions too and importantly the study of what sustains psychological wellbeing rather than purely focusing on disorders and when things go wrong.
In his work he defines 6 emotional styles
Resilience (the ability to recover from negative emotion)
Outlook (the ability to sustain positive emotion over time)
Social intuition (attunement to non-verbal social cues)
Self-awareness (the ability to perceive bodily cues related to emotions)
Sensitivity to context (how our emotions and behaviour take into account situational contexts)
Attention (the ability to screen out distractions and stay focused)
Interested in find out out about how your emotional wellbeing stacks up based on his 30 years of research? Have a go at this self reported questionnaire designed by his team to use in clinical research and receive results and guidance on what you can do to boost your wellbeing and take a look at these resources and courses that could help you and your organisation along the way
Want to know more? Have a listen to Richie speak a few years ago and you can also check him out on the mind explained on Netflix too!