“Find work you love and you will never work a day in your life.”
Attributed to the Chinese sage Confucius
Love is work. A lot of work. Everyone wants to find work they love, but rarely do we put thought to how much work it takes to develop work we will love. Everyone daydreams of being in love, but rarely do we daydream about the effort it takes to maintain a loving relationship.
The work that must be done is the work of building resilience. It is the kind of work that will pay huge dividends in not only your work life, your love life, but your whole life. Resilience is the gift of positive emotions that keeps on giving. These positive emotions are boxed up and ready for giving in your thoughts about work, relationship and your life in general.
Prominent researcher, Barbara Fredrickson, offers a way to transform the work of love into work you will love doing in her book Positivity. Fredrickson’s research identified the ten positive emotions that increase positivity [positive emotions].
Let me be clear. Resilience is an inner resource that grows over time. Positive emotions fertilize this growth.[1] That is where the work comes in.
Imagine spending your day noticing or developing the positive emotions of joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe and love. It is that easy (in theory at least).
Here are some facts and benefits of investing your time doing the work of building positive emotions:
Positivity feels good.
Positivity changes how your mind works.
Positivity transforms your future.
Positivity puts the breaks on negativity.
Positivity obeys a tipping point. The more you learn to create positive emotions in your life the more your life tips towards feeling and being positive.
Here is the coolest part about developing the positive emotion of love. Love encompasses all the other emotions, so when you develop love in your life, you are naturally building a bag full of resilience.
During the last week, I had the opportunity to speak with two Millennials, Kait Kellogg and Mackenzie Whyte about love, work and life. Most of all we spoke about creating positive emotions and ways to generate the actual physical feeling of love. If time is short and you just want to listen to that part of the discussion start at the 28-minute mark.
[1] Fredrickson, Barbara L., 2009. Positivity. Crown Publishers. Pp 49 and 110.
