Tracking Positive and Negative Emotions

Robert Plutchiks defines emotions as a natural instinctive state of mind that is often derived from different circumstances such as moods. Emotions may include serenity, joy, and sadness just to mention a few. Emotions can be categorized into two groups or forms they include; positive emotions and negative emotions. Positive emotions can be said to be the emotions that trigger good feelings such as happiness, joy, pride, contentment, and cheerfulness. Positive emotions are the wanted emotions. Negative emotions; on the other hand, refers to the unwanted emotions or feelings such as the sadness, anger, disgust, guilt, fear, and sadness among others. It is important to learn how to track different emotions every day and use it to develop strategies for increasing the positive emotions while avoiding the negative emotions. Positive emotions not only come in handy with good feelings but also are good for one's mental state. 

The Tracking Process and Results 

We were requested to track down all the emotions that we experienced over a period of four days. During this procedure, I found that I had experienced different emotions. The positive emotions were many and stronger than all the negative emotions. The positive emotions that I experienced included gratitude, serenity, joyful, thankful, pride and happy. The few negative emotions included feeling sad, disappointed, and curious, fearful and mad. I had anticipated more negative feelings compared to the positive feelings. However as the four days period of tracking my emotions ended I had recorded more of positive emotions than the negative emotions. The main reason that can be attributed to the positive emotions is the fact that during the period I was tracking my emotions I was at home from work. I noticed that every time I returned home from work I had more positive emotions. During the time I would listen to music, visit a friend and spend time with my mother. The strongest positive emotion that I recorded was joy. 

Spending time with my mother made me feel a lot of gratitude whereas listening to specific music made me excited and joyful. I have always been passionate about the blues music. Listening to this genre of music was one of the experiences that gave me my strongest positive emotions. Particular songs of this genre constantly reminded me of good memories hence was always enjoyable. The negative emotions such as sad, mad and disappointed were recorded or tracked during my working hours. For example, during working hours it was disappointing to find uncompleted duties from my colleagues. Although I experienced a few negative emotions at home, most of the emotions that I tracked were always positive. 

Psychological Benefits of Positive Emotions 

Evidence has shown that experiencing positive emotions are good for one's psychological and mental state. The benefits of positive emotions may include; positive emotions are able to undo lingering negative emotions. Positive emotions function properly as efficient antidotes for the various lingering effects that are imposed by negative emotions, this means that the positive emotions are able to correct the effects caused by the negative emotions. Example of this can be the feeling of aggression that can cause violence can easily be corrected by a positive memory helping one to calm down. Frederickson, a psychologist, refers to this effect as broaden and build theory. 

Positive emotions fuel psychological resiliency. People are able to improve the psychological well-being, physical health, and their mental status. This is done by cultivating or emphasizing on all the positive emotions at the specific opportune time, circumstances or situations that one is need of copying up with the negative emotions. For example, it has been observed that positive emotions or experience effects can help people cope-up with chronic stress. Psychologists have further provided evidence that shows that positive experience facilitates specific attention to negative, self-relevant information. Resilient individuals have been found to be able to bounce back quickly and efficiently from a stressful experience as a result of applying positive emotions. Reed Bower, a psychologist at the Harvard school of social sciences, did research that provided evidence to back up the resilience claim whereby he found that cardiovascular patients recovered quickly through high positive emotion activation. 

Positive emotions are also able to trigger upward spiral that improves the emotional well-being of individuals. They enlarge the scopes of psychological cognitions such as creative and critical thinking, attention, positive thinking and other forms of cognition. They build a psychological pool of resources that enhance one's subsequent emotional well-being. One positive feeling developed and practiced on a daily basis can help develop other positive emotions. For example, the feeling of pride as a result of achievement can result in feelings of joy. A pool of many positive emotions is created which results to boosting ones entire emotional being. 

Cultivating and Increasing Positive Emotions 

Having tracked my positive emotions, it is important to ensure that I increase and cultivate on them. Measures taken to cultivate emotions are only meant to encourage more positive emotions while avoiding all the negative emotions. One of the strategies that have worked for me is daily psychological and mental practices routines. The first step of this routine requires that one to identify the specific positive emotion to be increased; this is because not all the positive emotions can be experienced at the same time. For example, in my case having identified joy as my positive emotion, the next step would be to identify how to increase it. Listening to music had been strongly associated with the feeling of joy in my tracking record; it is, therefore, easy to increase to increase the feeling. The next step would draw a list or create a joy bank full of things that may make me feel joyful. Papers of good memories with loved ones and on different situations can be filled into the joy bank tool. With the bank one can pick up any paper every day, he/she is feeling depressed or moody, and the feeling of joy is easily achieved. This is a mental practice and may not work for others although it works for me. To increase the feeling of joy more blues music can be added to my playlist and more papers of good memories can be filled into the joy storage bank. This is the best strategy according to my perception. Positive emotions are very important for any individual's mental and psychological state. To cultivate on them having a good strategy plays an important role. 

Emotions Tracking Table