Recently I have been reading the 2023 book by Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey titled Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier. (There is a brief preview at Google Books). On page 14 they explain that:
“We all have our own natural mix of happiness and unhappiness, depending on our circumstances and character, and our job is to use the mix we’re given to best effect. The first task in doing that is learning where, in fact, we are.
One way to get evidence of your natural happy-unhappy mix is by measuring your levels of positive and negative affect – mood – and how they compare to others’ using the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, or PANAS.”
That schedule is described by Brooks in a pdf article titled LESSON TOPIC: Positive Affect and Negative Affect. (There also is a Wikipedia page). You rank twenty different emotions on a scale from one to five where 1 = very slightly or not at all; 2 = a little; 3 = moderately; 4 = quite a bit; and 5 = extremely.
And on pages 16 to 18 of the book they elaborate that:
“Unless you are the highly unusual person who is right at the average on both positive (about 35) and negative (about 18), you will fall into one of four quadrants, as illustrated in Figure 1. If you have above-average positive affect and above-average negative affect, you’re one of the ‘Mad Scientists,’ who are always spun up about something. If you’re below-average positive and below-average negative, you’re a sober and cool ‘Judge.’ ‘Cheerleaders,’ with above-average positive and below-average negative, celebrate the good in everything and don’t dwell on the bad. ‘Poets,’ who register below-average positive and above-average negative, have trouble enjoying good things, and always know when there is a threat lurking.
We know, we know: you wish you were in the cheerleader quadrant. But we can’t all be cheerleaders, and the world needs the other profiles as well. On a moment’s reflection, you’ll likely realize that it would be a nightmare if everyone saw only the bright side of everything, because we’d keep making the same mistakes again and again. Poets are valuable for their perspective and creativity. (And everyone looks great in a black turtleneck.) Life is more interesting with Mad Scientists in the mix. And Judges keep us all from blowing ourselves up with impulsive ideas.
You have a unique role to play in life. Your profile is a gift. But no matter what that profile is, you have room to increase the happiness in your life. To do that, you have to understand your natural happiness blend, manage yourself, and then play to your strengths. For example, let’s say you are a Mad Scientist. You will tend to react very strongly, good and bad, to things in your life. This might make you the life of the party, but it can exhaust your loved ones and coworkers. You need to know this, and work to manage your strong emotions and reactions.
Maybe you are a Judge. You are cool as a cucumber, and perfect for jobs like surgeon or spy (or anything in which keeping your head is an advantage – like raising teenagers). But with friends and loved ones, you might seem a little too unenthusiastic at times. This knowledge can be useful so that you work to muster a little more passion than comes naturally, for the sake of others.
Or perhaps you are a Poet. When everyone says everything’s great, you say, ‘Not so fast.’ This is important, because it can literally or figuratively save lives – Poets see problems before others do. But it can make you pessimistic and hard to be around at times, and you can tend toward melancholy. You need to learn how to brighten up your assessments and not catastrophize.
Even a Cheerleader needs emotional self-management. Everyone loves being a Cheerleader, but keep in mind that you will probably avoid bad news and have a hard time delivering it. That’s not always a good thing! You will need to work on that so you can give people the truth, see things accurately in life, and not say everything is going to be all right when it just isn’t true.
Learning your PANAS profile – your natural blend of happy and unhappy feelings- can help you get happier because it indicates how to manage your tendencies, but in separating the two sides, it also points out vividly that your happiness does not depend on your unhappiness. The PANAS test is empowering, because using it, many people understand themselves for the first time, and see that there is nothing weird or wrong with them. For example, some people go for many years thinking they are defective because they experience more negative feelings than others around them, and have a hard time mustering as much enthusiasm as others. They learn that they are simply Poets. And the world needs Poets.”
On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrices.
The cartoon was adapted from one at Openclipart.
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