Recipe for Originality

"Originality itself starts with creativity: generating a concept that is both novel and useful. But it doesn't stop there. Originals are people who take initiative to make their visions a reality...taking action..."

The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists." --Adam Grant in Originals

Conformity vs. Originality

"Conformity means following the crowd down conventional paths and maintaining the status quo.
Originality is taking the road less traveled, championing a set of novel ideas that go against the grain but ultimately make things better." Adam Grant, Originals

Conformists achieve in bureaucracies where you are rewarded for maintaining the status quo, until the bureaucracy dies from irrelevance.
Originals change the way we look at things and make a dent in the universe.
There is a conformist and original in all of us.
What do you want to stay the same and what do you want to change?

Quoting the Forward

"In the deepest sense of the word, a friend is someone who sees more potential in you than you see in yourself, someone who helps you become the best version of yourself." Sheryl Sandberg in forward to Originals

But what does it matter that I see the estrella or the diamond in the rough in you, if you refuse to agree with me and see it in yourself?

Hedonic Well-Being + Eudaimonic Well-Being = Flourishing

"Loosely speaking, I have described human flourishing as being beyond happiness in that it encompasses both feeling good and doing good (Fredrickson, 2009).

This definition is based on the foundational empirical work of Keyes and colleagues, which conceptualizes and measures human flourishing as a multidimensional combination of hedonic and eudaimonic well-being (Keyes, 2002).

Following ancient philosophies articulated by Aristotle and others, hedonic well-being captures individuals' global satisfaction with life alongside their pleasant affect, whereas eudaimonic well-being encompasses their sense of purpose and meaning as well as their resilience and social integration.

In the article with Losada, we further specified this 'feel good plus do good' definition by opening with 'To flourish means to live within an optimal range of human functioning, one that connotes goodness, generativity, growth and resilience' (Fredrickson & Losada, 2005, p. 678).

Amidst the current rise of interest in human flourishing, major theorists (Hupert & So, 2013; Keyes, 2002; Seligman, 2011) agree that the construct includes both feeling good (i.e., hedonia) and functioning effectively (i.e., eudaimonia) and in this way is the mirror opposite of common mental disorders such as depression and anxiety, which encompass negative (or flat) affect and poor functioning."



Fredrickson, B.L. (2013). Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios. American Psychologist. Advance
      online publication. doi:10.1037/a0033584

The Broaden-and-Build Theory

"...first introduced in 1998 and, in the intervening 15 years, widely tested and supported (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001, 2013).

The theory posits that the function of positive emotions, as shaped over millennia by the processes of natural selection, was to build an individual's resources for survival.

The means by which this build function was achieved was through the accumulated effects of moments marked by an affect-induced broadened scope of awareness, creating a temporary form of consciousness within individuals that included a wider array of thoughts, actions, and percepts than typical.

One implication of the broaden-and-build theory is that negative and positive emotions alike came to be part of our universal human nature through selective pressures related to survival, albeit on vastly different time scales.

Negative emotions carried adaptive significance in the moment that our human ancestors' experienced them, as their associated action urges - for example, to fight, flee or spit - drove behaviors that saved life and limb in dire circumstances.

Positive emotions, by contrast, carried adaptive significance for our human ancestors over longer time scales. Having a momentarily broadened mindset, after all, is not a key ingredient in the recipe for any quick survival maneuver. It is, however, in the recipe for discovery: discovery of new knowledge, new alliances, and new skills. In short, broadened awareness led to the accrual of new resources that might later make the difference between surviving or succumbing to various threats. Resources built through positive emotions also increased the odds that our ancestors would experience subsequent positive emotions, with their attendant broaden-and-build benefits, thus creating an upward spiral toward improved odds for survival, health and fulfillment.

In sum, the broaden-and-build theory states that positive emotions have been useful and preserved over human evolution because having recurrent, yet unbidden, moments of expanded awareness proved useful for developing resources for survival.

Little by little, micro-movements of positive emotional experience, although fleeting, reshape who people are by setting them on trajectories of growth and building their enduring resources for survival.

The broaden-and-build theory describes the form of positive emotions as to broaden awareness and their function to build resources."


Fredrickson, B.L. (2013). Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios. American Psychologist. Advance
      online publication. doi:10.1037/a0033584

Positive Emotions = More Resources = Flourishing

"Further evidence that positive emotions are a key active ingredient in flourishing mental health comes from a detailed unpacking of a Tuesday in the life of flourishing individuals, in comparison to a Tuesday in the life of those not flourishing and to a Tuesday in the life for those identified as depressed (Catalina & Fredrickson, 2011).

Using the Day Reconstruction Method, we tested the hypothesis, drawn from the broaden-and-build theory, that flourishers thrive because they experience greater positive emotional reactivity in response to routine pleasant activities and thereby build more resources over the span of two to three months.

Our results showed that relative to those who do not flourish or who are depressed, people who flourish experience bigger 'boosts' in positivity in response to routine daily events such as helping another person, interacting with others, playing, learning, and engaging in spiritual activity.

Moreover, flourishers' greater positive emotional reactivity, over time, predicted their growth in resources. In turn, flourishers' greater growth in resources predicted their higher levels of flourishing symptoms at the end of the study (controlling for initial levels of flourishing).

We uncovered virtually no differences between flourishers and others in the degree of negative emotions experienced on the targeted Tuesdays. We also uncovered surprisingly few differences between depressed people and non-flourishers, who had been prescreened and selected for showing no signs of flourishing, depression, anxiety, or substance abuse.

This pattern of results suggests that human flourishing is nourished by small, yet consequential, individual differences in positive emotional experiences in response to pleasant everyday events.

Flourishers don't simply 'feel good and do good." Rather they do good by feeling good.

So, just as greater negative emotional sensitivity has been found to seed and maintain depression, a phenomenon called negative potentiation, a parallel positive potentiation process appears to seed and maintain the beneficial - yet all too rare - state of human flourishing (Catalino & Fredrickson, 2011)."



Fredrickson, B.L. (2013). Updated Thinking on Positivity Ratios. American Psychologist. Advance   
     online publication. doi:10.1037/a0033584

i heart bowlby

We're only as needy as our unmet needs. John Bowlby

Are you meeting your needs?