Creating a Promising Future

Thus dispositional tendencies toward positive and negative affect are largely irrelevant to these findings. Positive affect--but not negative affect--is related to various indexes of social engagement and satisfaction (1988, p 129). What sorts of interactions produce feelings of relatedness? Reis et al (2000) also asked participants to describe the extent to which their three longest interactions of each day involved seven different types of social activity. Feeling understood and appreciated by partners was by far the strongest predictor of relatedness. Other activities also mattered (eg, talking about something meaningful sharing pleasant or fun activities), although conflict was uncorrelated with relatedness. This result follows directly from intimacy theory (Reis & Patrick, 1996 Reis & Shaver, 1988). Intimacy theory identifies several qualities that are central to feeling close and connected to others - revealing central aspects of the self (especially emotions) to partners through words, deeds, and nonverbal behavior perceiving that partners are responsive to the self and the self's needs and feeling understood, validated, and cared for. The Internet opens more windows on well-being than the library, since the Internet is a compilation of many libraries, news articles, newspapers and individual comments. Just type in the word wellness using one of the available search engines, and suddenly you have more sources of information than you can search for. Search engines often send information of the real relevance order back to your search words. So keep that in mind as you are looking. The first two articles will contain the most relevant information on well-being. You can find information on wellness, local wellness programs and instructors who specialize in one-on-one wellness assessments and personal success plans. Your local school physical education instructor and health teachers are invaluable sources of wellness information in that they have a health and wellness education. They are aware of the most sought-after sources after reliable sources of real wellness benefits. Lots of items you find, and much of the information you read, is not 100% accurate, ask a teacher, or instructor actually involved in wellness programs, and you will receive much more accurate feedback The Plaque would read as follows: To Mother Nature Who taught us all that it is better to give than to receive. Silverback gorillas, both male and female, spend a good amount of their day in grooming activities to look and smell good.

They bathe in the river, clean and polish their teeth with their nails, and spend hours grooming their pelts. The gorillas' emphasis on physical attractiveness--even when they are not mating--serves the purpose of making themselves desirable to each other. The more attractive the gorillas are to each other, the more they stay together as a cohesive unit. All the universal things we term beauty, that we deem attractive, can be traced to survival. When fruit is immature and useless as seed, it is green and inconspicuous against the foliage. When it ripens, it colors and gives off a sweet fragrance to attract birds and insects that will transport its seeds to fertile soil. While the fruit tree was evolving its color and scent signals, we were evolving the response that the contrast of red or peach against the green was beautiful, and the sweet scent told us it would be ripe and juicy. Beauty's evolutionary function is to pull living things toward itself. The theory includes both affective and cognitive components thus believing that a partner understands the self is necessary because without it, a partner's response, no matter how positive, would not be experienced as relevant to the true self. Thus in practice intimacy is most likely to be experienced and reciprocated in long-term relationships, although the interaction process described by the theory may occur with any partner (i. e. , with friends, acquaintances, romantic partners, coworkers, or therapists). Among people's diverse social goals, intimacy tends to have high priority across the lifespan (although it assumes special importance in latelife Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). From early adolescence on, when people discuss the kinds of relationships they want, intimacy is usually at or near the top of the list (eg, having a few special friends who care about you), which helps explain why a large portion of goal-directed social activity is aimed at obtaining or enhancing intimacy (Reis, 1990). Describing intimacy as an actively sought social goal highlights its relevance to the appetitive dimension and suggests one way of characterizing this dimension--namely, in terms of qualities that promote growth, flourishing, positive affect, and movement toward personal ideals and goals in the context of an ongoing connection with others. Other research conducted in our lab also illustrates the role of intimacy as an appetitive contribution to close relationships. In one study (Gable, 2000), married couples kept daily diaries reporting positive and negative behaviors they had enacted toward their partner, as well as whether their partner had enacted the same behaviors toward them (eg, expressing affection or criticism). Participants also described their feelings about the relationship on that day. Your federal government publishes huge amounts of information about health and wellness in Canada from a different perspective. The U.

S. Department of Agriculture is responsible for determining our recommended daily allowances and, as such, accumulates a lot of information about wellness programs, the state of physical and mental well-being in the United States and how we participate in wellness programs. How do I assess wellness? The well-being of the body occurs when all the body, physical and mental processes function as peak levels. What does it take to achieve a complete well-being of the body? It takes more than just taking a trip to the gym, or a walk in the park. To assess our state of well-being, we need to establish the goals we achieve by being well. We make our lives more rewarding and easier to live with. A fruit tree evolved to attract pollinators. We evolved to notice and appreciate fruit when it is ripe so we could feast on it. Symmetry, too, is a universal component of beauty. A symmetrical dwelling is a sturdier dwelling and a more attractive dwelling. People with symmetrical facial features and bodies are more beautiful than those with asymmetrical bodies, so it is only natural that those who preferred symmetry had healthier children and lived longer in their safe shelters. At the biological level, beauty serves a natural selection sexual function: If members of a species were not attracted to each other, there would be no sexual behavior, and extinction would be swift and final. More broadly, the evolutionary idea behind our attractive instincts contemporized is to present ourselves/work/organizations in such a way that others are drawn toward us/our work/our organization and help secure our ecological niche. Deftly applied, the genius of your attractive instincts helps you do this. All things being equal, the more attractive job candidate makes the score. More to the point, if you don't want the job, make yourself as unattractive as possible. This research examined a wider range of positive and negative behaviors than earlier research has, to rectify the methodological biases discussed previously. The results revealed that positive and negative interactions made independent contributions roughly equivalent in magnitude to marital well-being.

Furthermore, the positive behaviors that were most influential were those that contributed to a sense of intimacy-understanding, validation, and caring. Another study directly compared the relative contribution of appetitive and aversive processes in a sample of dating couples (Gable, Asher, & Reis, 2000). Earlier research by Rusbult and her colleagues has shown that accommodation--the tendency to respond constructively to a partner's bad behavior--is related to important relationship outcomes (Rusbult et al, 1991). We reasoned that a parallel process pertaining to positive events may also be beneficial, which we call capitalization, or the experience of sharing personal positive experiences with partners (Langston, 1994). Perceiving a partner's genuine pleasure for one's personal good fortune connotes anticipated responsiveness and support for the self in contrast, a partner's disinterested or jealous response, beyond dampening the experience itself, may signal distance and a lack of relatedness. Consistent with this reasoning, we found that capitalization was associated with positive relationship outcomes (i. e. , satisfaction, intimacy, trust, and commitment) even when the degree of accommodation (which made significant contributions of its own) was controlled. We are able to reap the benefits of well thought out plans of diet and exercise many years in our lives, just because we took the time to stay well and fit. Your immune system is a telltale sign of your state of well-being and one of the real benefits of a healthy and well immune system is the extension of the onset of many age-related diseases. Conditions such as macular degeneration, Alzheimer's disease, stroke, heart attacks and overall feelings of good health depend on a healthy immune system. Our ability to continue in a normal routine many years after the accepted retirement age is a goal achieved by maintaining a state of well-being. For many older people, their work becomes a real source of pleasure. Work no longer appears as the thief of our free time, it becomes an old friend that we are used to visiting with. This can become a reason to keep getting up and moving on to the present day. In any event, our ability to continue to participate is a direct benefit of our state of well-being and continued good health. In assessing our wellness goals and our state of being, the mental capacity to learn, teach and live is a top priority. Mental sharpness comes from the continuous use of the mind to learn, communicate and think. A presentation using the latest technology is typically rated higher than the same content presented in a less eye-catching format. It speaks to primal likeability.

For example, during a cutback, your boss is told to eliminate 20 percent of the staff who are performing at the same level. You can bet the ones to stay on the pay-roll are the ones she likes the most. Thus, check your likeability quotient. The ability to beautify, maximize one's attractiveness, gives us an edge, whether it is in a job interview, at a party, during a presentation, or while building a business. Beauty or the Beast? Importantly, the silverback gorilla's emphasis on attractiveness is a constant--not just a behavior during mating season. Gorillas always want to look good- it is as if looking good is something that gives them pride. Wanting to look good must be part of our evolutionary heritage because it is the rare person who does not like to feel attractive or be desired. In other words, reactions to both positive and negative events are relevant to relationship well-being. Whereas the benefits of intimacy and relatedness may be available in various types of interaction and relationship, affection tends to occur primarily in close relationships, particularly romantic relationships. Affection has been studied in two ways--as an affect, usually called love, and in behavioral displays, typically assessed in reports of affectional acts. A sizable literature associates both forms pervasively and robustly with favorable relationship outcomes (see Berscheid & Reis, 1998, for a review), although the underlying causal processes are not well-understood. Perhaps as a result, when the relative contributions of affection and negativity are compared, affection usually fares poorly, typically accounting for relatively little variance over and above the effects of negativity. A common explanation involves inhibitory mechanisms--that conflict and criticism interfere with spouses' willingness to behave affectionately. Furthermore, an important component of affection--passion--tends to decrease in the early years of marriage, leading several theorists to suggest that the importance of passion is largely limited to initial attraction and relationship formation. Nonetheless, affection seems likely to play an important role in successful ongoing relationships. For example, in their longitudinal study of rural Pennsylvania newlyweds, Huston and Vangelisti (1991) showed that expressions of affection, especially by husbands, accounted for significant variance in marital satisfaction assessed two years later. Similarly, overt affection and expressions of love in the first two years of marriage predicted lower rates of divorce 13 years later (Huston, Caughlin, Houts, Smith, & George, 2001). The benefit of conserving these resources is felt even longer than physical well-being. What about the physical benefits of continued well-being?