Joy
Of the 10 positive emotions, joy is the most common and accessible.
Want proof? Visualize a room full of adorable puppies or kittens.
Notice how your focus shifted, your mood lightened, and you unconsciously smiled? Boom, joy delivered.
The brilliance of joy lies within our ability to create it on demand.
It is also highly contagious.
The experience of someone else’s joy takes inordinate effort to dismiss.
But wait, there is more to joy than how you feel.
The emotional state of joy is associated with a sense of playfulness and is the closest measurable emotion to happiness.
Functionally, joy plays an essential role in increasing the mind’s ability to acquire new skills.
Think about joy beyond its enjoyable properties.
If you need to grow a skill, activating a joyful cognitive state is your first step.
Take care to create the cognitive conditions for the outcomes you seek.
Positive emotion is more than hedonistic pleasure.
It is a tool that serves a purpose: activating specific cognitive faculties.
Thoughtful leaders leverage positive emotions strategically.
Your ability to think about coffee while drinking coffee is metacoffeenition,
-Morning Cup
Interest sparked around the 10 positive emotions?
This is week 2 of a dive into each; start from the beginning here.