More than anything else in our lives, stress causes us the most serious hazards to our health, our peace, our relationships, and our ability to live life to the fullest. Stress inhibits our ability to handle the unexpected and closes us off in our interactions with others. It can keep us in a state of “fight or flight,” which means what it sounds like. Instead of engaging in life and loving, we will either “fight” it or we will “flee” from it. In doing so, we will make every situation worse, and will isolate ourselves even more. Stress can close us off from life in ways that make our journey one of terror instead of one of adventure. 

What can we do? Some would say, we need to increase our “joy ratio.”

Psychologist Barbara Frederickson says that every negative emotion we experience is best c…