I wouldn’t know how authentic this story is, but, apparently, there is a common belief that in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific, the islanders practice a special form of curse ritual.
If a tree needs to be cut down and if it happens to be too big to be chopped down, the islanders stand around it and curse it. This negative energy somehow damages the tree’s life energy the result being that after about 30 days of getting cursed the tree falls to the ground.
The question is, when a tree, which can withstand the vagaries of nature and appear mighty externally, can just wilt under negativity, imagine what could happen to human beings when they are constantly criticized or belittled. Negative emotions take root in your body, in your cells, and Human beings are made up of trillions of cells.
Bruce Lipton in his book The Biology of Belief states that “These smart cells are imbued with intent and purpose; they actively seek environments that support their survival while simultaneously avoiding toxic or hostile ones. Like humans, single cells analyze thousands of stimuli from the microenvironment they inhabit. Through the analysis of this data, cells select appropriate behavioral responses to ensure their survival”.
Every emotion activates a chemical response in your body. Positive emotions cause the production of “feel good” hormones like serotonin and dopamine while negative emotions result in the production of “stress” hormones like cortisol and adrenaline.
When you are constantly dumped with toxic feelings like anger, threats, shouts of disgust or contempt, these distressing emotions result in chronic stress.
This chronic stress leads to the secretion of the required stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. This results in unnatural inflammation in the system which has been scientifically proven to be the root cause of many diseases.
Volumes of research is available on the ill effects connected with negative emotions and how it spirals downwards to various health related issues. Stress and anxiety for instance can lead to psoriasis, eczema, stomach ulcers, high blood pressure and heart disease.
Diabetes and sometimes even cancer is also said to be psychosomatic, physical symptoms that occur for psychological reasons are said to be psychosomatic.
Negative emotions are so deep rooted that they can lead to an erosion of your self-regard, which in turn affects the way you communicate with yourself and others.
There is a story of a person who was cleaning a refrigerated container unit. Suddenly he was trapped inside. When everyone had gone off for the day he gave up. He wrote on the wall of the container: “These are my last words, I am going to die.” The next day the workers found him dead. Now here comes the twist. They found the refrigeration unit in the container was broken, there was sufficient oxygen to have kept him alive. The negative self-talk had been so deep rooted that he had simply willed himself to die.
This question probably led to a new field of study called positive psychology. This movement was pioneered by American psychologist Martin Seligman. So what is positive psychology? This term was originally coined by Abraham Maslow. Christopher Peterson of the University of Michigan defines positive psychology as “the scientific study of what makes life most worth living. It is a call for psychological science and practice to be as concerned with strength as with weakness; as interested in building the best things in life as in repairing the worst; and as concerned with making the lives of normal people fulfilling as with healing pathology.”
Improving your positive emotions has got tremendous benefits both physiological and psychological. So how do you ensure that you get a daily dose of PE? It is not just a case of trying to convert something really awful into something positive or grinning through adversities. Masking your feelings is not the solution.
Improving positive feelings is more like understanding what makes you happy: it could be a morning walk or yoga, making a cup of tea, or anything that makes you feel good. When you do things for others, for instance, just making their day can make you feel positive.
Once you have understood these little joy enhancers then you should learn to prioritize and build them into your daily routine and ensure that these vital moments are done in the first part of the day.
When we increase positivity in our lives, lots of good things happen: we feel better physically, our interpersonal skills improve, our problem solving capacities improve, and we are able to better manage our stress. Thus the quality of our lives improve.
