{"id":1560,"date":"2009-03-23T10:04:22","date_gmt":"2009-03-23T18:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/?p=1560"},"modified":"2009-03-23T10:19:10","modified_gmt":"2009-03-23T18:19:10","slug":"the-science-of-positive-thinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/2009\/03\/the-science-of-positive-thinking\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science of positive thinking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/fredricksona022609.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/fredricksona022609-300x201.jpg\" alt=\"fredricksona022609\" title=\"fredricksona022609\" width=\"300\" height=\"201\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1565\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/fredricksona022609-300x201.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/fredricksona022609.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>By Vicky Dickson<\/p>\n<p>Like any newly published author, Barbara Fredrickson has done a lot of book signing lately. One instance in particular stands out for her: the elderly man at the Regulator Bookshop who said he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been reading her book for six days when his family members remarked on the positive changes they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d noticed. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a whole new Jim,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d said. <\/p>\n<p>Jim told her he was 88 years old.<\/p>\n<p> And that, for Fredrickson, was validation for the effort and sacrifice she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s put into writing <em>Positivity<\/em>. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>As a UNC professor who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worked in the field of positive psychology for more that 20 years, Fredrickson knows that Positivity is not particularly likely to further her academic career. She knows, too, that the benefits of positive emotions have already been widely touted. But what motivated her to add yet another tome to the self-help aisle was the chance to present the scientific evidence behind the assertion that positive emotions are good for you. By explaining how science can show what actually happens in a person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s body and life as a result of positive emotions, Fredrickson hopes to reach the skeptics who might otherwise dismiss positivity as just a new set of rose-colored glasses.<br \/>\nThough she radiates joy and compassion, Fredrickson is no Pollyanna. Her initial motivation for investigating positive emotions was simply that few other psychologists were doing so. She also admits to once having been told (by a close friend) that she studied emotions because she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any. <\/p>\n<p>During the course of her studies, however, Fredrickson came to realize that the experimental results she was seeing could have a beneficial effect on her personal life. When the every-day stresses of juggling her career and family were compounded by her husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unexpected, life-threatening health problems, positivity helped. And not by banishing negative emotions; it would have been impossible for her not to have been anxious and sad during her husband\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hospitalization. <\/p>\n<p>But positivity enabled Fredrickson to see both the good \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the care and compassion of her neighbors and colleagues &#8211; and the bad in her situation. That focus, in turn, gave her the strength to pull her family through a very trying time.<\/p>\n<p>Fredrickson knows she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been given an opportunity very few academics enjoy: the chance to integrate her life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work into the essence of the rest of her life. And by writing Positivity, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hoping to pass on a prescription that can help others learn \u00e2\u20ac\u0153how to live, how to grow, and how to make a positive contribution to the world.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As Fredrickson herself has done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Vicky Dickson Like any newly published author, Barbara Fredrickson has done a lot of book signing lately. One instance in particular stands out for her: the elderly man at the Regulator Bookshop who said he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been reading her book for six days when his family members remarked on the positive changes they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d noticed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1566,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1560\/revisions\/1566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/mill\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}