Key Points:

Luckily for us, we also have two basic emotions that were identified as more positive in the earliest studies:

These are Joy and interest. and we can also ‘practice’ these emotions to increase our wellbeing.

Think about this: the cultivation of interest (a basic positive emotion) is the emotion at the heart of mindfulness.

Interest holds a preeminent place in the list (according to Izard, an important emotion researcher) who writes that it is ‘the driver of selective attention, from which all positive and negative emotions flow”