Are Happy People Dumb?

Excerpt from Harvard Business Review blog - http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/03/are_happy_people_dumb.html
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"We often erroneously think that the "deep" people are the ones who brood. The darker the movie, the less redemptive the ending, the more artistic people think it is. The more messed up the painter or the musician's life, the more creative we assume they were. But this is not true. It requires an incredible amount of depth to be positive and hopeful in the midst of adversity. In truth, negative emotions stem from the most primitive part of the brain that responds to fear and threat. Seeing the negative is easy; formulating a cognitive strategy about how to positively respond to challenge requires much higher-order functioning in the brain.

Researchers like Barbara Fredrickson have found that when we are negative, our brains resort to "fight or flight" thinking about the world. But when we are positive, our brains "broaden and build" allowing us to create new patterns of success and widen the amount of possibilities our brains can process.
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So don't worry gals, be happy and its definitely smart to be happy not dumb :D

Have a nice weekend!!!

Cheers,
Shalini