If you tried to look for the Great Five positive emotions on yesterday’s emotion safari, you probably found that they are quite badly outnumbered by the Big Five primitive emotions. 

This means that your mental wildlife reserve is out of balance. If you want a harmonious ecosystem, you’ll need to introduce more members of the Great Five to control the population of the Big Five. 

Here are some tips on where to find each member of the Great Five: 

Inspiration

There are two steps to finding some Inspiration to introduce into your mental ecosystem: 

1. Study something you find genuinely interesting. Read a book, take a course, or even just browse the internet. 
2. Apply this knowledge to something you care about, ideally to some aspect of your work. 

Inspiration is attracted to a 50/50 blend of knowledge and passion. Mix those two together in your head and you’ll be treated to some regular sightings of this elegant member of the Great Five.  

You’ll also notice that Craving generally makes itself scarce when Inspiration is around. When you get so deep into a creative activity that you forget to eat, you’ll know you’ve arrived 🙂

Altruism

Altruism is the ability to derive genuine happiness from contributing to the happiness of others. It comes in two subspecies: Local and Global. 

Local Altruism is a genuine wish for the happiness of those you interact with. It has no hidden agenda, and no desire to be liked or respected by others. This characteristic makes Local Altruism the perfect antidote to the debilitating fear of rejection and addiction to approval caused by Ego. 

Global Altruism is a genuine wish for the health and happiness of your community or society. It can be a great motivator for positive actions to address serious societal and environmental issues. 

The nice thing about Altruism (as opposed to Inspiration) is that you can simply decide to turn it on. It takes quite a lot of practice to remember to turn it on in the right moments. But if you put in the effort, Altruism will start showing up all by itself before you know it. 

Flow

Flow will only show up in your mental ecosystem if you cultivate a positive relationship with work.

Sadly, most people still see work as something that must be done to earn money so that they can try to buy happiness. This unfortunate state of affairs is responsible for both the global stress epidemic and our wide range of serious environmental problems. 

The solution is to reach the state where work is the reward in itself. This does not happen overnight, but some smart professional development will give you increasingly frequent Flow experiences. 

And for all those times when your job just sucks, capitalize on the close similarity between Sloth and Flow. Be too lazy to overthink this terrible burden of yours and just get started. You’ll be surprised at how undramatic the experience becomes if you don’t make all that effort to sabotage yourself 🙂

Tolerance

If you really try, I’m sure you could make a very impressive list of things to be frustrated about. But somewhere in the middle of that list, you’ll probably realize just how many of these things are totally outside your control. 

For all those things, we need Tolerance: acceptance of that we cannot change and patience to effect lasting positive change where we can. 

So, if you catch yourself wasting lots of mental resources on a problem you can do nothing about, see it as the ideal opportunity to invite Tolerance into your life. Likewise if you find yourself demanding an instant solution to a large and complex problem.

Indeed, much like Altruism, Tolerance simply needs lots of practice and repetition. Put in the work and it will start showing up by itself soon enough. 

Excitement

We all need some exciting stuff to look forward to in our lives. If you suffer from a lack of Excitement, it means that you’re not taking enough risks. 

The arena of risk is where we get a very interesting interaction between Excitement and its equivalent from the Big Five: Worry. Excitement is the anticipation of a very positive future outcome, while Worry is the anticipation of a very negative future outcome. 

Both Excitement and Worry are necessary for a good life. If you just blindly dive into risky endeavors, you’ll be ruined before you know it. But if you avoid all risk, you’ll never go anywhere. Finding a balance is key here. 

This balance is unique to every individual. Try to consciously adjust your risk tolerance to make sure you have enough to be excited about, but keep within reasonable bounds of worry. 

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So, there you have it. I really hope these tips help you to introduce some more of the Great Five into your mental ecosystem.

It requires some practice and repetition, but the rewards are worth it 🙂 The emotion safari exercise discussed yesterday can be a big help to make these changes in thought habits.   

Good luck and I’ll see you tomorrow for the wrap-up of this week’s topic.