How Thriving Practices Enhance Lives

Thriving practices enhance lives directly through positive moods and experiences, and indirectly by preventing cumulative stress and distress. These two powerful benefits are usually related. People who are thriving do experience disappointments, betrayals and traumas, but those experiences do not define their lives or dominate their life stories. Their thriving lifestyles promote resiliency in response to stressful challenges, even for people with temperamentally low stress thresholds. Their many healthy practices build resources that serve as buffers against discouragement and catastrophic perspectives.

The Basic Feelings of Thriving

Let's look closer at three important basic positive feelings that are central to thriving: sustainable pleasure, attachment and contentment. Scientists can measure the pleasure response mainly by the level of dopamine found in the reward areas of the brain. Other chemical sources of pleasure are endorphins and quick spikes of adrenaline. Sustainable pleasure from many sources such as relationships and accomplishments is essential to well-being, and its absence often results in sadness and hopelessness.

Temporary pleasure can be the most dramatic but unsustainable mood elevator. The word elevator is so appropriate, because temporary pleasure shoots us up the mood charts faster than any other feeling. Soon after it starts to subside, we feel like we are headed for the basement and want to stop the “letdown” free fall with another boost of pleasure. Chocolate chip cookies, exhilarating bungee jumps, cocaine fixes, and uncommitted sex demand repeat performances to sustain the pleasure they produce. While this is not an exhaustive list, it is evident that the pursuit of temporary pleasure in not a good primary strategy to be a consistently happy and healthy person.

Pleasure is also activated by attachment and bonding in ways that are much more sustainable. It leads to elevated levels of dopamine, experienced as what researchers refer to as social pleasure. Social pleasure is cumulative, and sustained somewhat over time and even distance from the individuals to which we are attached. It is accompanied by the emotions that we identify as affection and gratitude.

Attachment is the biological and emotional response through which people are bonded to others, starting in life in their child-parent relationships and continuing with their friends, mates and parent-child relationships. It promotes intimacy, compassion and sustainable pleasure. It is easy to see how pleasure and contentment (safety) activate attachment in all types of relationships, and how fear and emotional pain would interfere. We will look closer at attachment when we look at cultivating and nurturing relationships.

Contentment works largely through brain circuits that activate the parasympathetic nervous system. This system balances and counteracts the activity of the sympathetic nervous system which energizes us to accomplish things, but also throws us into what is called “fight or flight” responses. The contentment response soothes us and creates a sense of safety and peace, allowing our minds to operate more optimally. In addition, contentment is the basic feeling associated with the satisfaction in life that accompanies personal success, personal growth and contributions to others. When content we can think more clearly, focus better on many enjoyable activities and resist stress and distress. Contentment may be that low consistent positive feeling that sustains very happy people in near continuous positive moods.

The contentment response not only elevates the other positive feelings, but helps lower stress and distress. Persons may learn to activate it intentionally through such activities as meditating, gardening and various other hobbies, listening to music, praying, and many others. We are more content when we engage life more fully. Staying occupied with active rather than passive activities that we enjoy increases our overall contentment and satisfaction with life.

While they operate primarily through different biological processes, all three of the thriving feelings activate each other. Sustainable pleasure is activated through satisfying relationships and activities which also promote contentment. We seek and rely on the presence of others for contentment to lower stress and distress. Pleasure and contentment (safety) promote attachment. Our past experiences testify about what happens to our thoughts and impulses when we increase our positive feelings. Positive themes, memories, and beliefs are strengthened. They, in turn, support more positive feelings. There are many ways to get on that upward spiral.

Upward Emotional Spirals

The cumulative effect of thriving emotions has been referred to by Eric Garland at Florida State University and his colleagues as an “upward spiral”. In this spiral, the mind, brain and body are moving toward increasing states of wellness and resilience in the face of challenges. Thriving in any one moment propels the individual to thrive in the next. This results from an emotional loop in which positive feelings activate positive thoughts, positive thoughts activate positive feelings and defensive reactivity is suppressed.

Thriving is both the cause and effect of open beneficial perspectives which facilitate problem-solving and emotional resolution. A perspective is open when it can be modified by new information and experiences. It is beneficial when it promotes constructive responses to opportunities, challenges and real threats in life. When thriving, threats which appropriately activate the defending system are resolved with less stress and distress. Long periods of low-stress thriving strengthen neurological and hormonal systems.

Garland and his colleagues have reviewed considerable evidence that thriving emotions and experiences produce durable cumulative positive changes over time in our minds and brains. In our minds these changes are represented as positive themes, memories and beneficial perspectives that activate positive moods and constructive behaviors in response to challenges and adversity. This is consistent with the positive adaptive cycle in which thriving experiences result in personal resource development, and resource development promotes positive experiences
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The ability to remain in positive adaptive cycles has been found in research to be the hallmark of resiliency. In our brains, positive adaptive resources produce faster cortical inhibition of alarm responses originating in the amydala and faster cardiovascular recovery from stress. In addition, the thriving spiral increases resting vagal responses that stabilize our sense of safety in life and promote empathy and altruism toward others.

The research of Barbara Fredickson at the University of North Carolina, and her colleagues, has demonstrated that recruiting thriving emotions through an intentional structured daily practice of focused loving-kind thoughts about others and oneself builds personal resources over time. This is accomplished by entertaining thoughts for the well-being of a person to whom you are close, and then extending the process to focus on others.
This practice activates dispositions of gratitude and compassion and related positive moods in the moment and for a time afterward. The cumulative psychosomatic effects over periods of time are exponential. The longer a person practices, the more personal resources he gains from each week of practice, broadening his scope of beneficial attention and perspectives for responding to threats and challenges.

Individually, personal resources contribute significantly to security, success and satisfaction with life. Collectively, they impact physical, psychological and social health. These resources have been found in research studies to include self-compassion, purposes in life, self-efficacy, savoring the future, objective self-observation, problem-solving, beneficial perspectives and supportive connections with others. There is a reciprocal effect between these resources and thriving experiences. Cultivating these resources by adopting intentional practices and relying on thriving coping strategies promotes well-being.

Thriving Lifestyle Practices

The chart that follows ties together many thriving lifestyle practices and coping strategies that enhance life and prevent the accumulation of stress and distress. These practices and strategies all interact with each other to promote emotional regulation, constructive problem-solving, nurturing relationships, life goal attainment and personal growth. Collectively, they place and maintain individuals on an upward spiraling path that fosters resilience in the face of life challenges.

Many of the various mental and behavioral lifestyle practices known to be beneficial are listed in the first area of the chart. Individually and collectively they all promote thriving. Any aware person will recognize that each has value, but most of us fail to fully adopt many of them. The sections on cultivating a thriving lifestyle and practicing self-examination address the problems of limiting beliefs and self-control, and review the steps of commitment involved in adopting these practices.

Cultivate a Thriving Lifestyle Through:

Good nutrition and sleep
Expressions of gratitude
Personal productivity
Humor and laughter
Social intimacy and support
Enjoyable activities
Physical exercise and dance
Compassionate service
Participation in communities
Spiritual practices
Avoiding addictions

Observe Yourself For:
Stress and Distress
Discouragement
Blame of others and situations
Lack of motivation
Negative behavior
Self concealment
Social withdrawal

Practice Self-Calming When Stressed Through:
Compassionate self-talk
Slow deep breathing
Systematic muscle relaxation
Meditation and prayer
Positive imagery
Relaxing Music

Create Beneficial Perspectives When Distressed Through:
Challenging limiting beliefs
Adopting enabling beliefs
Compassionate acceptance

Resolve Emotional Distress By:
Naming distressing feelings
Reflecting adaptively
Practicing forgiveness
Obtaining social support
Re-engaging life goals after disappointments & failures

Solve Life Problems by Focusing On:
One problem at a time
Situations in which it occurs
Your beliefs and behaviors
The role you play

Make Constructive Changes In Yourself By:
Expecting challenges
Practicing self-examination
Committing to changes
Writing a plan
Focusing on performance
Gathering resources
Creating accountability
Using mental practice
Adjusting strategies
Building on successes

Coping with Adversity

Life challenges and problems include responding to adversities, addressing needs for personal growth and benefiting fully from life opportunities. While the focus and outcomes of these types of life challenges may differ, the processes of coping are similar in each type. Thriving people meet rather than avoid adversity through the positive coping strategies in the chart. They solve life problems primarily by taking responsibility for their contributions and making personal changes.

There are two general types of constructive coping approaches to meet adversity; one is problem-focused and the other is emotion-focused. Both require personal changes. In the problem-focused approach an individual alters his behavior in order to change the behavior of others, the situations he faces and the outcomes he gets. This is accomplished primarily by problem-solving strategies.

In the emotion-focused approach the individual looks inward to alter his emotional feelings and thoughts to better accept others and the situations he faces or has faced. This is accomplished primarily through the practices of loving kindness: gratitude, compassion and forgiveness. These two types of approaches are embodied in the first part of the serenity prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Choosing one or both types of positive coping approaches begins with an analysis of multiple causes to produce an accurate and beneficial definition of the problem. While it is tempting to think of someone or something else as the cause of a problem and your need, adversity or distress as the effect, this simplified version is seldom accurate or helpful.

The successful problem-solving of adverse situations relies heavily on reaching an accurate definition of the problem and a viable action plan. Most problems result from the interaction of multiple causes and are solved when these causes reach compatibility. Reaching compatibility begins with constructive causal analysis that recognizes all the causes and how they interact. Since the main causes we can control are within ourselves, this is the most important place to look. Changing our own roles in coping with challenges and problems can change the contributions of others and of situations.

When we have problems, our beliefs are often one of the causes. When fretting about and contributing negatively to something outside of our control, our beliefs are incompatible with other causes. The solution involves compassionate understanding, acceptance and empathy. We can change our contributions to problems by adopting compassion for others and situations being like they are, and for ourselves for being like we are.
Viable action plans focus primarily on making personal changes. If we demand that others or situations change to meet our expectations without making personal changes, those expectations become one of the causes of our problems. Planning and making personal changes to interact more constructively with the other persons and situations often yields better solutions. Thriving individuals expect to make such changes to meet challenges and solve problems. Where positive changes in others and situations turn out to be of our control, acceptance is often more beneficial.