The Positive Shift

Our happiness in daily life, the state of our physical health, and even how long we live are largely determined not by external events, but rather by the way we think about ourselves and the world around us.

As economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz points out, people spend six times as much time washing dishes as they do golfing, yet there are roughly twice as many tweets about golfing as there are about doing the dishes.

Why does giving to other people lead to such positive health outcomes? Giving help to others seems to buffer us from the negative effects of stress.17 Here’s a simple example of the power of even small types of prosocial giving: People who experience stress on a given day generally report feeling worse.18 But those who engage in some type of prosocial behavior—from holding a door open for someone to asking if someone needs help—don’t experience the negative effects of stress on mood.

As Mark Twain wrote, “The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer somebody else up.”

“When tragedy occurs, it presents a choice. You can give in to the void, the emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even breathe. Or you can try to find meaning.”

And even if their thoughts occasionally drift away from the present, people who meditate report less mind-wandering to unpleasant topics.38 This strategy for maintaining a focus on the present day during the act of meditating lets people cope more effectively even while anticipating upcoming stressful events, such as waiting to hear bar exam results.39

Here’s a simple example of the benefits of experiencing even a relatively low-level adverse event. Researchers in one study examined the effects of a ten-day sailing trip in New Zealand on resilience in teenagers.18 The teenagers experienced tough conditions, including hard physical work, seasickness, bad weather, crowded living conditions, and extensive daily chores. The researchers measured levels of resilience in students during the trip and again five months later, and then compared those levels of resilience to those of college students who did not participate in such a trip.
The differences in resilience between these two groups of students were long lasting. The experience of tough conditions, coupled with the knowledge that one has the ability to cope with these challenges, led to significantly higher levels of resilience compared to college students who didn’t experience such a trip. In this way, stressful experiences seem to “immunize” us against future stressors. We learn from experience that we have the strength to navigate tough challenges and that belief is tremendously helpful when we later encounter other stressors in daily life.

People who go through life with a positive outlook have better health in part because they experience less stress. When they face difficult life circumstances, they use adaptive coping mechanisms—tackling problems head-on, seeking out social support, finding the silver lining, and so on. Proactive approaches to stress minimize its effects and its wear and tear on the

people who go through life with a positive outlook not only feel happier, they also experience better physical well-being across virtually all dimensions.13 They have fewer physical symptoms, such as coughing, fatigue, and sore throats, and recover from surgery faster and with less pain.

In a creative test of the power of negative experiences to spread within a social network, researchers in one study examined how unhappiness can spread through social media. In this study, researchers first evaluated both positive and negative emotions conveyed in people’s Facebook posts.24 Then they compared the frequency of these emotional expressions to the amount of rainfall in each poster’s city. As you might expect, people tend to post more negative emotions, and fewer positive emotions, on rainy days. In fact, in a large city, such as New York City, a rainy day leads to an additional 1,500 negative posts by those living in that city compared to on a nonrainy day.
But what is even more interesting about this study is that the researchers then examined how one person’s Facebook post could influence the expressions posted by friends in other cities. These findings again provide strong evidence for the power of emotional contagion within a network. In other words, having a friend post something negative on Facebook increases the likelihood of a negative post and decreases the likelihood of a positive post, by one’s own friends. To return to the New York City example, a rainy day in New York City not only yields another 1,500 negative posts by those living in the city (and experiencing the rain) but an additional 700 negative posts by friends living elsewhere (and not necessarily experiencing rain).