The upper range of our emotions consists of the positive ones like love, peace, gratitude, joy, hope, and states like certitude, freedom, and exhilaration. Easy access doesn’t just come from practicing positive emotions. It doesn’t come from just working on your strengths and developing them. These things help, but they don’t create the easy access that we are capable of having. “Easy access” to your UpSpiral means that it’s actually within your reach, in your grasp, and close to you.

It is a decision that gives us access to the upper range of positive emotion. It is the decision to live in as high an UpSpiral of positivity as we can engineer for ourselves.  There is a certain blasé, take-it-for-granted, move-on-to-the-next new thing kind of thinking that can easily get in the way of making the decision to sustain one’s UpSpiral. 

We teach, because we believe it is true from the research, that an UpSpiral is the best place to be, and the higher your UpSpiral, the better your health, the greater your positivity reservoir, and the better you handle negativity. 

It’s very easy to get distracted, and then to rationalize one’s distraction with the “busyness” or the “purposefulness” of these distractions. The UpSpiral is like any other good thing that can be experienced as an hedonic treadmill. You can get used to it. But as you do, if you will notice it, you lose your spark and you lose your “zing.” People aren’t as interested in listening to you, and it’s harder and harder to mange the organization or be the star you’d like to be. You may even become boring.

Easy access to the real upper range of emotion depends upon the decision to have it. If you want your pencils, pens, or other tools to be within your reach, you move them closer to you. Do the same with your UpSpiral Score. Taking great gifts for granted undermines gratitude- the core of them all.