Give your critical mind a rest.

Give your critical mind a rest.

Practicing joy or gratitude throughout your day expands your mind and stabilizes your nervous system. Negative emotions create stress, which gets stored in your body and depletes health. Researchers now think emotions are malleable, and people have more influence over them than previously thought.

Bottom line -- with intention you can move your days towards light and happiness. And teaching this to our children now will sets them up for lasting benefits.

The idea of cultivating positive emotions is pretty simple. There is a whole "family tree" of positive emotions, including pride, nurturant love, contentment, nostalgia, flow, gratitude and awe. Choose one of these emotions and then do a specific action regularly that helps evoke it.

Psychologists have devised suggestions for how to get started, but it can be as simple as taking time to notice and appreciate the small things around you that uplift you.

We feel better when we can shift our focus away from the self — that is "me and my problems" -- and lift our gaze up to the people and things that feel positive. It helps put the self in its balanced place and to help us focus on the joys that little moments and our cherished people can bring.

Train your mind to open and let in all of your senses — sight, sound, touch -- to take in a broader scope of what is going on around you.