Appreciate sincere emotion when you feel it in your gut; seek out tiny moments of gratitude and positive energy.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—If you think your satisfaction with life boosts your positivity, you’ve got it backwards. A 2009 study published in the journal Emotion implies that life satisfaction trickles up from tiny, positive events that occur every day—not down from what you have or what you think you need.

THE DETAILS: Researchers wanted to test a few theories on why people with more positive emotions consider themselves more content with life, and whether their levels of negative emotion had any impact on that. They surveyed 86 college students, who filled out online emotion diaries at the end of every day. At the beginning and end of the study, the students also filled out questionnaires based on life satisfaction and “ego resilience,” a measure of how easily people bounce back from life’s challenges and curveballs.

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The researchers found that experiencing a greater number of positive emotions was a much better predictor of life satisfaction and resilience than having fewer negative emotions. People who were more content weren’t content just because they had fewer bad days. Their satisfaction with life came from being better able to deal with challenges, which itself was influenced by experiencing more positive emotion.