Fredrickson wondered about the flipside: if negative emotions have these harmful physiological effects, then perhaps positive emotions could reverse them. Might feeling good 'reset' the nervous system and put the body into a more relaxed state? To test this out, Fredrickson came up with a rather mean study. Researchers told a group of people that they had one minute to prepare a public speech that would be filmed and judged by their peers. Knowing that the fear of public speaking is practically universal, Fredrickson hypothesized that this would elevate the subjects' levels of anxiety and stress. And it did; people reported feeling more anxious, and experienced increases in heart rate and blood pressure. Next, the researchers randomly assigned participants to watch one of four films: two evoking mildly positive emotions, the third neutral ones, and the fourth sad ones. And they then measured how long it took the participants to 'recover' from the stress. Their findings were intriguing. The participants who watched the positive-emotion films took significantly less time to return to their baseline state in terms of heart rate and blood pressure. And those who watched the sadness-evoking film took the longest time to return to baseline. This is the 'undoing hypothesis': that positive emotions can 'undo' the effects of stress and other negative emotions. If stress is the problem, then feeling good might just be the solution. But the final, and perhaps most transformative, implication of feel-good productivity goes well beyond any one task or project. Because third, feeling good enriches your life. In 2005, a team of psychologists read all the studies they could find on the complex relationship between happiness and success. They delved into 225 published papers which involved data from over 275,000 individuals. Their question: Does success, as we're often told, make us happier - or could it be the other way round? Credit and Disclaimer This text is from Feel Good Productivity by Ali Abdaal, shared only for typing practice. Please support the author by purchasing the book if you find the content valuable. All rights remain with the author and publisher. Thankyou!