Sharon Begley in “Happiness: Enough Already” argues that being extremely happy may be a goal of anybody but it also can be “the end of the drive for ever-greater heights of happiness” (455). Begley claims that “being happier is not always better” (455) and an excessive happiness may affect badly to people’s life. She points out that people who reach the highest level of happiness don’t feel motivated to move forward since they are already satisfied. The author goes on insists that happiness does not last long because “negative emotion evolved for a reason” (456). She presents many cases of famous people who experienced negative emotions to create their well-known works showing the need of sadness in every lifetime. Furthermore, people desire to gain more and more happiness causing them the fear to experience sadness. Therefore, what they once considered normal sadness is regarded as a psychiatric illness now. The author then concludes that everything would be much better if “the single-minded pursuit of happiness as an end in itself” (458).…
The role emotions play in humans lives is significant because it gives meaning to our life experiences. Positive emotions can give people more confidence while also boosting their self esteem and giving them a more positive outlook on life. On the other hand, negative emotions can be painful or lead to bad decision making, but they can help one grow as a person. However, both positive and negative emotions can influence human’s thoughts and actions, giving us motivation to persist toward some kind of goal. This goal can be something big and inspiring such as climbing up the social ladder like McCourt or something that everyone can relate to such as combating negative emotions the way Frankenstein’s monster or Shelley did. Humans can share their emotions through the words they say, the actions they take, or the things they create such as literary works or works of art. The poems, novels, movie, and song discussed were created by people with different cultural backgrounds and through their work, it is possible to see some of the differences between western and eastern culture. Even so, they share something in common which is the portrayal of emotions and its role in human lives. No matter where emotions might lead us to in the future, no one can deny the fact that emotions are an irreplaceable part of us that make humans…
A teacher name Mielke is chiefly effective about his students because he is stressed out about telling the truth to let the students know how he feels. Stressed about meditating to write down what I really want to say, But he is stressed that he can’t stop caring about his students? He tells students that he cares about them, not just about test scores or grades, but as a person. To make students become better, they must follow his tips and advices in order to become successful for life. He is furthermore serious about life’s important. The writer agrees that it is important to make wise decisions in the future. Mielke from “What Students Really Need To Hear,” he is serious that students don’t realize why life is important, and how he wants…
Emotion affects our motivation in many ways. For example, there are many people in society who have a fear of failure. We all have our own idea of what we consider failure to be. However, the thought of not obtaining self-actualization in whatever aspect, is a fear we all experience in some capacity. Due to this emotion, we as mankind are motivated to achieve personal goals on a daily basis, in hopes of reaching the high level of hierarchy to self- actualization.…
Norman says that “affect is a vague sensation that may be either conscious or subconscious, but emotion is the conscious experience of such affect” (Norman 55). Emotions are not the result of a forced action; emotions occur naturally. Karin Koenig agrees with this statement by saying that “feelings belong to our primitive defense system and are rooted in our collective biology and the history of the species. They are neurological, biochemical reactions that happen on a cellular level in response to stimuli. They don’t require thinking” (Koenig “How Do I Know When I Have a Feeling or an Emotion?”). Emotions are used to differentiate the moral and the corrupt; the wrong and the right. We cannot survive without our emotions and feelings because our different emotions help us distinguish the good things from the bad things. “Our emotions help us make decisions. Studies show that when a person's emotional connections are severed in the brain, he cannot make even simple decisions” (Hein “Emotions- Importance Of; Management of Negative Feelings; Positive Value of”). People whose emotional needs are not fulfilled become depressed which usually leads to their death by committing suicide(Hein “Teen Suicide”). “Teenagers around the world are killing themselves to put an end to their intense emotional pain” (Hein “Teen Suicide”). Teenagers especially need their emotional needs to be fulfilled because…
Emotions are our motivation for everything we do, but it can also lead us into trouble when they go awry. Uncontrolled emotions cause us to act irrationally, which, more time than not, leads the characters in Shakespeare's ‘Romeo and Juliet’ to tragedy. Anger, Love, and Grief are of the most difficult to abstain from acting upon, and lead to the worse consequences.…
Emotions are personal experiences that are hard wired into every single human being on the planet. Yet, somehow people seem to have little control over them. After studying all the different kinds of emotions people can feel, I did a three day inventory of the emotions I experienced. In this paper, I will discuss how hard or easy it is to identify emotions and the methods I used to identify my emotions. I will analyze the types of emotions I felt and whether they were primary or secondary. Were they the typical emotions I experience every day? Do I give in to any emotional fallacies? How freely I express my emotions and what I have learned from doing this exercise.…
In the world today, it has been said that having a successful life and a career will make you happy. Moreover, longitudinal studies shows that happiness precedes as well as follows success and many of the effects of positive emotions were parallel by experimental research that induced positive affect in well-controlled studies positive emotions seem to build people’s intellectual, psychological, and social resources that contribute to enhanced happiness, as well. Having success in life is an enjoyable thing when it is involving happiness with positive behaviors. It’s like enjoying something every day, every week, and waking up just to go to work. Have you known somebody, or maybe you have done this yourself, always complain about going to work, or don’t…
Ekmannn’s study suggests that cognitive factors affect our emotions after the biological factors do. The study’s aim was to find a relationship between the physical state and emotions. The participants were given different emotions, which they had to represent with their facial expressions and hold them for about 10 seconds. The participants physiological systems were measured after that and the results were that participants that picked different emotions had different responses in their physiological system. The participants that picked emotions such as anger had for example a higher increase of temperature in their bodies than the participants that did not have anger and picked an emotion such as sadness. Therefore what was found from this experiment was that emotions can be measured by the changes in their physiological system.…
There are countless benefits associated with the experience of positive emotions. Life is hard, but experiencing positive emotions can become a stress-reducer, open our minds, build enduring resources, and improve our overall well-being. Negative emotions tend to narrow our thoughts to a limited set of possible actions that might be taken in response to an emotion-evoking situation (Baumgardner & Crothers, p41). Positive emotions contribute to enhancing our physical, psychological, and social resources. While negative emotions may compromise our health, positive emotions can enhance our health. Multiple studies have shown how positive emotions broaden our outlook, offset negative emotions, enhance our resilience, and improve our emotional well-being (Baumgardner & Crothers, p42).…
Happiness, the intangible emotion that we all desire. Is there proof that this emotion even exists? Eduardo Porter has written an essay titled “What Happiness Is”. In this essay Mr. Porter took the time to study the emotion of happiness that we all experience in life. He makes an attempt to question not only his reasons as to why he is happy, but to have the reader question their own sense of happiness as well. What is it that makes us feel joyful emotions, and how can vastly different experiences cause us to feel the same emotion that we call happiness? While searching for the proof of this feeling Eduardo Porter reflects upon his own personal experiences, professional studies and ultimately decides that his questions may never be answered. Porter states that, “most psychologists and economists who study happiness agree that what they prefer to call “subjective well-being” comprises three parts: satisfaction, meant to capture how people judge their lives measured up against their aspirations; positive feelings like joy; and the absence of negative feelings like anger.” This is an important analysis of how we form the idea of how joyful we actually are. Something in life that one person might be ashamed of could improve the level of cheerfulness for another person. For example, the thought of getting a tattoo might cause one individual to feel guilt while another individual might feel pleasure at the same thought. Because there is no definitive formula that provides a calculated experience of happiness for everyone, it is interesting to question what actions or lack thereof in our lives cause us to be cheerful or to lose some of the happiness that we have already gained. The organization of this essay was well thought out and effective. The author opens with the statement, “Happiness is a slippery concept, a bundle of meaning with no precise, stable definition.” This opening statement provokes the reader to question their own beliefs in…
We know that emotions lead to the development of attitudes, and our attitudes lay the groundwork for our behaviors. When one is emotionally satisfied with any given situation, their outlook and attitude about that given situation is predominantly positive. With a positive mindset, one tends to exhibit positive behaviors. We know the opposite to be true as well. Following the rational behavior model laid out in chapter 4 of the book, given any perceived environment, a person is going to present with…
The “Pleasant Life” is living your life with as much pleasure and positivity as possible and using your skills to increase your happiness (Tiller 2012). However, there are shortcomings to the “pleasant life” which are that people tend to get bored of the activities that make them happy and that is lacks flexibility. Seligman’s research has contributed to the field of positive psychology by helping people acquire the skills to be able to handle life in a more positive way. According to Seligman, there are three components of happiness: 1) pleasure, 2) engagement with one’s family, work, romance, and 3) meaning (Wallis 2005). Each type of happiness is connected to positive emotions with a sequence from gratification to strengths to purpose.…
How one responds to a situation is a huge factor that contributes to personal happiness, for the state of happiness is achieved from accomplishing a certain goal.…
Frederickson, B. (2001). The Role of Positive Emotions in Positive Psychology: The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions. American Psychologist, 56(3), 218-226.…