Dr. Barbara Fredrickson’s Positivity Portfolio Exercise
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A few months ago, my friend gifted me a box decorated with a blue, pink, and gold map of the world. Before I moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan mid-pandemic, I filled the box with stuff I love. Artsy cards from friends with encouraging notes written in loopy handwriting, and song lyrics they know I love. Wrinkled ticket stubs and wristbands from U2, Madonna, and Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts. An expired passport peppered with ornate stamps. Postcards from art galleries in Malaga, Istanbul, San Francisco. Colorful coasters from restaurants in Rome and Cartagena. A piece of sea glass (a battered shard from an old beer bottle) plucked from a beach in Sicily. A sliver of crepe paper with the words, “Your intuition brought you here.” Weirdly, an out-of-place photo of me (looking rather miserable) in my law firm office in Tower Two of the World Trade Center in early 2001.
I recently read the book Positivity by Dr. Barbara Fredrickson. Fredrickson suggests an exercise to cultivate positivity. First, we choose a positive emotion, such as joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, or love. Next, we collect physical items that invoke the chosen emotion, creating a “portfolio.” Then, we dedicate a bit of time every day for a week, to engage with the items and chosen emotion — and observe what happens.
I decided to try the Positive Portfolio exercise. I chose the emotion of “awe.” I grabbed my world map box to re-discover what was in it, and see if it qualified as a good start to an “awe” portfolio. For a week, I spent 10–15 minutes every morning with my box. I ran my fingers along the raised gold lettering identifying continents and oceans on the box itself. I touched the bumps on a metallic, rose gold envelope inside. I gripped my Sicilian sea glass in my palm. I grazed the brushstrokes in a Cy Twombly painting in a postcard. As I meandered through travel mementos in the box, I remembered running my hands along a hand-carved wooden bed frame at an Indigenous-run hotel in Vancouver. I heard the typewriter keys that Madonna clacked before the opening song of her Madame X tour. I smelled the musty books in the Dublin literary museum where I exchanged a few Euro for a yellow sketch of Oscar Wilde.
Before the pandemic, travel was a huge part of my personal and professional identity. I hopped on a plane a few times a month. When I travel, awe interrupts my constant need to accomplish something. I stop overthinking. I wander. My brain overflows with awe instead of the 28 things on my to-do list. Spending time with my Positivity Portfolio first thing every morning, I was able to marvel at the world (and my life) in a different way than jumping on a plane. I felt calm. And for the next two hours of work immediately afterwards, I felt in “flow” — the concept that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes as “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter.”
I started this Positive Portfolio exercise the day before the 19th anniversary of 9/11. Contrasting the sad, lonely girl in the WTC office picture in my box with the myriad layers of awesome life experiences I have had in the past 19 years — concerts, trips all over the world, new friendships, new jobs — invoked a tremendous feeling of awe. This feeling stayed with me throughout each day. I felt awe while teaching my remote law classes, running in a nearby park and breathing in the first whispers of fall weather, and exploring the flowers and art on the High Line pathway.
The last morning that I spent time with my portfolio, I opened a sparkly envelope I had added to the box. Inside was a sticker my friend Kelly had sent me before my first day of teaching this semester. It was a sticker of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wearing her dissent collar, with the words, “All rise.” RBG exemplified how a person can inspire incredible awe without being big and loud. Small in stature; measured in voice; colossal in impact.
If you need a jolt of positive emotion this week, consider creating and then hanging out with your positivity portfolio. What jolt of positivity might you cultivate for yourself and others?
