Over the past couple of weeks, you’ve heard a lot about the Big Five primitive emotions responsible for so much pain and suffering in today’s world. The Big Five include Craving, Ego, Sloth, Frustration, and Worry.  

This week, we introduced some positive emotions that can help bring balance to the system. I like to call these guys the Great Five: Inspiration, Altruism, Flow, Tolerance, and Excitement. 

This post summarizes some useful techniques for inviting the Great Five into your life. 

The checklist

Here are three simple steps to experiencing more positive emotions:

1. Get to know the Great Five by heart.
   • It’s also very valuable to learn the Big Five equivalent to each member of the Great Five.
2. Open up your awareness to the Great Five in your emotion safaris.
   • Every time you encounter a member of the Big Five, just bring your awareness to it’s Great Five equivalent. 
   • No need to overthink – just become mindful and observe what happens.
3. Gradually introduce more members of the Great Five into your life.
   • Create some strategies for increasing Inspiration, Flow and Excitement.
   • Commit to lots of practice and repetition for Altruism and Tolerance.  

The Great Five positive emotions are natural predators to the Big Five primitive emotions. If you manage to introduce more of them in your mental wildlife reserve, you’ll create a more balanced and harmonious ecosystem. 

Such emotional balance is crucial for effective living in the modern world. Next week, we’ll delve deeper into this interesting topic of balance. 

But before that, I’ll see you tomorrow for another bit of Amateur Creativity 🙂