34 the deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven 34 khalil gibran

barbara fredrickson is a psychologist who works at unc chapel hill and studies my favorite field of academic research positive psychology.

her most recent book is titled positivity and discusses her research that shows that there is a mathematical formula by which success in terms of production in a business sense or feeling happy in a more personal sense can be predicted by the ratio of positive events to negative ones. she has discovered that the 34 tipping point 34 where good things start to happen occurs at a ratio of three to one. that is three positive events for every single negative event.

i think this finding can tell us a lot about life how to perceive it and how to live it with great satisfaction. as frederickson puts it 34 if we 39 re aware of the tipping point ratio that could make a big difference in how we choose to live our lives. 34 as i would put it having three cheerful feelings for every negative one is the tipping point at which people begin to achieve their dreams.

there are always going to be negative events in our lives and we may not be able to do anything about them. but we always have the ability to increase the power of the positive events in our lives and even multiply them by focusing our attention on what makes us feel good.

pema chodron in when things fall apart describes how our daily lives can feel like a confused busy street the traffic is going fast in all directions and we can't find a way to cross. it's overwhelming and frightening.

we 39 re so busy jumping out of the way of the speeding cars that we can't understand what's going on or how we contributed to the confusion.

but if we watch the activity for a while we begin to see that there are openings in the traffic. we can step up on the sidewalk and take a more objective look. and no matter how busy the traffic we can understand that there's a flow.

if we could look at it from the top of a building we 39 d see that it really doesn't have anything to do with us it's just a flow of energy. we begin to see the challenges as part of the deal not necessarily good or bad just part of life.

now the circumstances in our lives can seem like that traffic. and we often believe that our love relationships should be a refuge from that traffic the one place that should give us peace. but our relationships with those closest to us are really the most traffic filled and the best place to practice looking for flow.

aside from meditation being in relationships is the best practice to help us see where we 39 re stuck and what isn't working in our lives. as joko beck an american buddhist nun writes in everyday zen

so a relationship is a great gift not because it makes us happy it often doesn't but because any intimate relationship if we view it as practice is the clearest mirror we can find.

so what then should we simply look at our relationships as a practice something that helps us grow stronger when we 39 re out in public provided it doesn't kill us first not at all. because the practice i 39 m suggesting that you introduce into your relationships is the practice of looking for the positive things that will put you into that 3 to 1 ratio.

your exercise

today practice accentuating the positive by noticing your surroundings and asking 34 what feels good about my current situation what makes me feel lucky to be here 34 mentally registering the benefits of any given circumstance will remind you that you have the power to influence your reaction when things become challenging.