Don T Worry Be Gloomy Analysis

Happiness is critical to anyone’s life, but some scientists say that everyone should be happy most of the time.
Today, positive psychology believes that emotions, such as anger and sadness, are harmful to a person’s life overall, but people need emotions to express themselves fully and protect themselves from harm. In Susan David’s article
“Don’t Worry Be Gloomy,” she reports on how negative emotions can actually be good emotions because afterward, people can be happier than before. In Sharon Begley’s article “Happiness: Enough Already,” she remarks on how sadness is actually good for the human body and mind. Although scientists say that people should always strive for happiness and that they have found ways to increase happiness, emotions that put people into a
“bad mood,” such as sadness and anger, help them to do many tasks that happiness prevents.
Negative emotions help people to think deeper.
Susan David states in her article “Don’t Worry Be Gloomy” that “‘negative’ moods summon a more attentive, accommodating thinking style that leads you to really examine facts in a fresh and creative way. It’s when we’re in a bit of a funk that we focus and dig down” (125). Negative emotions allow people to focus on what they are doing and think in a more creative way. When individuals are feeling negative emotions they tend to dig deep into their mind for a solution to the problem that they are facing. People in history achieved greatness when they were in a melancholy mood. In Sharon Begley’s article “Happiness: Enough Already,” she states that “Abraham Lincoln was not hobbled by his dark moods bordering on depression, and Beethoven composed his later works in a melancholic funk. Vincent van Gogh, Emily
Dickinson and other artistic geniuses saw the world through a glass darkly” (456). Many of these peoples’ famous works were created while they were in their dark or bad mood. When individuals are in a bad mood humans think that something is wrong and try to make them happier but those individuals in the bad mood create masterpieces. Not only do people’s negative emotions allow for deeper thinking, but also they can protect them and signal to others a need for help. Begley notes that “fear tips us off to the presence of danger” and that “sadness seems to be part of our biological inheritance.... because it signals to others a need for help” (456). When people are happy all the time, they tend to dismiss very real threats. Not having fear at all will cause people to not worry so much about what is happening around them, even though they really should. Being in a negative mood can help improve people’s memory. David comments that “one study found that shoppers remembered much more information about the interior of a store on cold, gloomy days when they weren’t feeling so exuberant that they did on sunny, warm days when life felt like a breeze” (126). Negative days help people remember what was surrounding them in a store as opposed to happy days when people do not remember as much. Being in a negative mood allows individuals to think deeper and therefore remember a lot more about their surroundings. Individuals believe that they have found ways to increase another person’s happiness level.
Rather than focusing on the negative emotions, authors Martin E.P. Seligman, Acacia C. Parks, and Tracy Steen talk about three ways that were found to increase an individual's happiness. There are articles that have been written about what happiness is, and no one can assume an answer to that question than any other philosophical one, like where the line is between sanity and creativity. Science has brought light to the components of happiness and what makes up those components. The authors of “A Balanced Psychology and a Full Life” have stated that “the first route to greater happiness is hedonic, increasing positive emotion” (Seligman et al 418). The definition of hedonic is relating to or considered in terms of pleasant sensations. That would mean the first step would be increasing positive emotions by pleasant sensations. Martin E.P. Seligman et explains that “[the] second route to happiness involves the pursuit of ‘gratification’” (419). People can take gratification in the simplest of activities like fixing a bike or reading an amazing book. Individuals must invest themselves fully into the pursuit of gratification; it requires them to draw on their character strengths to fully invest themselves. They also mention the third route of happiness and that “[it] comes from using these [character] strengths to belong to and in the service of something larger than [themselves]” (419). When individuals feel as if they belong and that they are serving in something bigger than themselves, it can bring those individuals happiness. Positive emotions are important to most individuals because they can do so much for a person.
Some scientists say that everyone should join in on the pursuit of happiness because of all that happiness can do for them. David remarks that “Positive emotions also drive us to success, help us make better decisions, reduce the risk of disease and allow us to live longer” (124). Positive emotions may help with all of that, but being overly happy can damage more than one thinks. Begley argues that “once a moderate level of happiness is achieved, further increases can sometimes be detrimental” (455). Trying to increase the level of happiness that people sit at can harm their income, career success, education and political participation. Begley also comments, “but maybe, just maybe, the single­minded pursuit of happiness as an end in itself, rather than as a consequence of a meaningful life, has finally run its course” (458). She is talking about how maybe the pursuit of happiness that everyone is so focused on has finally run through the world and is done.
Always striving for happiness is what scientists say that people should do, but those negative emotions that they dislike help people to do what happiness prevents them from. People think deeper when they are in a melancholy mood. Negative emotions also help protect people from danger and signal to others a need for help. Having emotion aside from happiness helps people lead a better and fuller life. Without the “negative” emotions, people would not be able to be creative, they would not be able to think deeply, and they would not be able to look out for themselves. Positive emotions are good, but not when they are the only thing that people are chasing.