We know now that the brain is malleable. Since emotional experience is also brain-based, what if we practice emotions that bring greater balance and wellbeing?

Which emotions might we practice? We all begin life with some basic emotions that are inborn and universal across cultures. Emotions are reflected in distinct facial expressions. These images from early studies done by Paul Ekman illustrate a classic list of basic emotions. Moving clockwise from the top left, we see adult and infant facial expressions of anger, fear, which is called distress in babies, disgust, and sadness.

These are four of the six. basic emotions. What they have in common is that they are all ‘negative’ – in the sense that they are usually unpleasant and unwanted experiences. Since there are only two more, we obviously come into the world equipped with more negative emotions than positive ones. We seem to have a “Negativity Bias.”