10. How Positive Emotions Make You More Resilient

How Positive Emotions Make You More Resilient

Positive emotions do more than brighten your day — they can actually make you stronger. In this post, we’ll explore how positive emotions help you bounce back from stress, build resilience, and strengthen emotional flexibility, based on findings from the Broaden-and-Build Theory. If you’ve ever wondered whether small moments of joy can really make a difference in hard times, keep reading.

Last week, we began exploring the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions, developed by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson. This research explains why positive emotions do more than just feel good in the moment, they actually expand our thinking, build enduring personal resources, and help reverse the physical effects of stress.

Today, we’re continuing that conversation with a focus on how positive emotions help us bounce back from adversity. We’re going to talk about how cultivating positive emotions during hard times helps us build resilience, not by ignoring pain or pretending everything’s fine, but by giving us tools to cope in healthier, more constructive ways.

In the last post, we talked about how positive emotions broaden our thinking. They help us see more possibilities, think more creatively, and connect ideas we might not have seen before. In contrast to negative emotions, which narrow our focus to deal with threats or stress, positive emotions open us up, and that openness is part of what helps us build long-term emotional strength.

The Science Behind Flexible, Positive Thinking

Some of the earliest evidence for this broadening effect came from decades of research by psychologist Alice Isen and her team.

What they found was when people were in a positive emotional state, their thinking became more:

• Flexible and open to new ideas,
• Creative,
• Integrative, meaning they could connect different pieces of information more easily,
• And even more efficient.

They also found that people in a positive mood were more likely to prefer variety and were more willing to try new things. Isen described this as a kind of broad, flexible mental state that allowed people to think in more inclusive, big-picture ways.

Research supports this idea. Positive emotions have been linked to increased dopamine activity in the brain, which is known to help boost mental flexibility and learning.

Positive Emotions and Resilience

But what happens when life gets hard?

Research shows that positive emotions fuel psychological resilience, which is more than just grit or toughness. It’s the ability to return to a balanced state after stress, setbacks, and adversity. To recover quickly and keep going with clarity and intention. So, positive emotions don’t erase negative feelings or make everything okay, but they help us cope better.

Fredrickson along with researcher Michele Tugade found that resilient people don’t just endure hard experiences better, they also experience more positive emotions in the process. In fact, in a study where participants were placed in a stressful situation, they found that people who scored high on psychological resilience experienced just as much anxiety as everyone else but recovered faster. What made them different was that they also experienced more positive emotions, like interest, amusement, or even a sense of challenge, both during and after the stress.

That combination is what helped them recover more quickly. Not by ignoring the hard stuff, but by allowing something else to be true at the same time. So, if you’ve ever laughed in the middle of a hard day, bonded with someone during a tough time, or paused to appreciate something small when everything else felt chaotic, that wasn’t nothing. That was an example of your psychological resilience.

The Difference Between Healthy and Toxic Positivity

Now, it's important to note that cultivating positive emotions is not the same as forcing yourself to stay positive or denying your struggles. That would be toxic positivity, which does more harm than good.

Toxic positivity says, “You’re not allowed to feel that.”
Healthy positivity says, “You’re allowed to feel this and still reach for something that helps.”

Resilient people often practice this with things like:

• Humor
• Optimism
• Gratitude
• Curiosity
• Hope

And surrounding themselves with people who help them feel supported. Even during difficult times.

So, it’s not about pretending that things are okay. It’s about having more emotional range to navigate what you’re going through. Because when positive emotions are part of the picture, they help us gain clarity and problem solve creatively, even when things feel hard.

This Week’s Happiness Challenge: Pause and Reframe

This week, your Happiness Challenge is to practice what I call Pause and Reframe.

Here’s how it works:

When something hard, frustrating, or overwhelming happens, take a moment to acknowledge it fully, don’t brush it aside. Then ask yourself, “Is there something small and positive I can notice or create alongside this?”

Some ideas include:

• Try reframing “I have to do this” with “I get to do this” if what you’re doing is hard but something you want to do
• A hopeful thought or daydream about when the hard time passes
• Focus on something that made you laugh, or find something to laugh about
• Even leaning into the hard thing and recognizing your own effort to keep going

If you’d like help with this practice, I’ve created a free expanded worksheet in the Podcast Resources Hub. It includes a journaling space to reflect on both the difficult moments and the positivity you notice. Go to karencastillo.org and click on Podcast or find the link in the post description to get started.

Final Thoughts

Remember, small moments of positive emotion aren’t just helping you get through one hard day. Over time, they’re helping you build enduring personal resources, things like emotional intelligence, optimism, connection, and creative problem-solving. These aren’t just traits you’re born with. They’re skills that grow through repeated experiences with positive emotion.

That’s what this work is really about.

Every post in Redefining Happiness is designed to help you create a more intentional, fulfilling life. If today’s reflection resonated with you, I invite you to share it with someone else who’s walking their own path toward happiness. And don’t forget to visit the Resources Hub for tools, journal pages, and more support to help you implement this week's practice.

-Karen

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