Small Steps to Becoming More Resilient

How to Increase Your Ratio of Positive Emotions

Dealing with job loss and career change can be very stressful. You may feel that you don’t have much control. What can you do today?

Distinguished researcher, Barbara L Fredrickson, argues that by proactively taking small steps you can gradually build your resilience and ability to deal with stressful events. The first step is to become more aware of moment to moment emotional responses.

Try this 2-minute test to assess the ratio of positive and negative emotions that you experience on a daily basis. Dr Fredrickson provides this tool as a way to easily monitor your emotions on a daily basis.

Doing this each day for 2 weeks will give you better information.  Based on this research, the tipping point is a 3:1 ratio of positive to negative emotions. Wherever you are today, what small steps can you take to increase the number of times you experience positive emotion? Try this tool and share your experiences below.

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