Working the Positivity Ratio

I spent part of last week with my mother who will be 91 in three weeks. She lives in her own cottage within a retirement community on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Her back porch looks out on the Tred Avon River where geese honk all night long. Mom has a theory about why the geese are so extroverted at night (they talk to keep warm, according to her).

She walks, or rather shuffles, with a cane or a walker. But this is the only sign of old age. She still gets dressed for her active and fairly formal social life every day, still gardens–though this is diminishing after two scarey falls last summer–and still enjoys her evening cocktail. She has many friends. She is active in her church and gives sage advice to her children, grandchildren and friends. Her friend Lynn calls her a “force to be reckoned with.”

Although I have not always appreciated all of my mother’s qualities–she can be demanding and petulant, although less so every year–I see her as a model of Barbara Fredrickson’s positivity ratio. My mother lives comfortably in the zone of three positive interactions and emotions for every negative one she has. She is entirely engaged with and loves life.

As I have floundered around looking for a topic to write about, it strikes me that this ratio–one that I teach about, and see so clearly in my mother–combined with the values work I wrote about previously, is the combination I’ll blog about. I’ll try in 2011 to find my own sweet spot, my own 3:1 that aligns with my values and increases my own sense of aliveness.