By Nic Marks
We need stability and change, but too much of either can be problematic. Without change, things stagnate, and we get bored. This evolutionary tension is managed by emotions, evolved to help us adapt. This article explores two kinds of happiness that foster a dynamic balance between our competing needs for stability and change.
Stability and change. We need both in our lives, but too much of either can be a problem. If everything is always change, change, change, we become unsettled and exhausted. If nothing ever changes, things stagnate and we get bored. There is a tension between the two states.
This tension has deep evolutionary roots. All living beings must maintain internal stability to stay alive. They also must interact with an ever-changing external environment. Our feelings and emotions have, at least partially, evolved to help us navigate this tension, with that self-regulation often referred to by biologists as homeostasis. Keeping our body temperature, blood pressure and heart rates within certain ranges are all examples of this process. For a wonderful exploration of the evolution of emotions, see Antonio Damasio’s book The Strange Order of Things (Damasio, 2018).
In this article, I will explore the fact that it is helpful to think about there being two different kinds of happiness, and that together they help us create a dynamic balance between our competing needs for stability and change.
Two types of positive emotions
Over the years, more and more research attention has been focused on the power of positive emotions. A key breakthrough came in the 1990s when psychologist Barbara Fredrickson proposed her broaden-and-build theory. She demonstrated that when people feel good, they become more creative, collaborative, and open to new ideas. Positive emotions, she argued, don’t just make us feel better — they broaden our range of responses in the moment, and over time they build resources like resilience, confidence, and social bonds. In short, they are not just pleasant extras but part of our evolutionary toolkit for survival and growth.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the complexity of emotions, over the intervening years, some caveats have emerged, especially in regard to the broaden element of the theory. For example, a positive emotion such as interest explicitly narrows our attention so that we can focus on details. Enthusiasm drives us towards pursuing a goal, but in this mood we are less likely to be open to new ideas. Courage demands that we close ourselves off to hazards and ignore risks.
The idea that some positive emotions broaden our attention and others narrow it might at first appear to be a trivial spat over words. However, the Norwegian psychologist Professor Joar Vittersø, who I have collaborated with on several projects over the decades, proposes that this difference is due to positive emotions activating two different motivation systems: one that maintains stability and one that drives change (Vittersø, 2025). This makes it clear why we have an array of positive emotions and it is useful to differentiate between these two underlying types, which I call sustaining and striving.
Sustaining
Sustaining emotions such as contentment, tranquillity, safety, caring, lovingness and pleasure help us relax and connect with other people. They are restorative when we are depleted, raising our spirits when we feel low. When we are feeling good in this way, we are more open, which helps us see the bigger picture, enhancing our creativity and making us more flexible. These emotions help us maintain the stability we need, both internally and relationally.
Sustaining emotions are related to what some people call our rest-and-digest system (Gilbert, 2009). They are associated with oxytocin, the so-called love hormone that helps us build relationships; and with endorphins, which can make us feel calm. The opposite of feeling sustained is to feel stressed, depleted or isolated.
Striving
Striving emotions help us accomplish tasks and achieve goals. They are sometimes called our drive system. Enthusiasm, excitement and interest all help us mobilise our own energy and that of others. Striving emotions are, to varying degrees, characterised by a narrowing down of attention, which naturally helps us focus on the tasks at hand and to create change.
The hormone most closely associated with these striving emotions is dopamine – sometimes called the molecule of more, as it drives our desires (Lieberman and Long, 2019). The opposite of experiencing striving emotions is to feel directionless, disengaged or bored.
Sustaining and striving at work
Striving emotions have a clear link to productivity – they help us focus and achieve goals. It’s not surprising that they are much valued in the business world. The quieter, sustaining emotions are just as important, though, as they are related to creativity, resilience and, ultimately, staff retention. They also critically help teams create the psychological safety needed to work well together.
Our need for both stability and change means that building happy, successful teams is a very dynamic process. Things are always in flux, which can be fun and exciting as well as sometimes quite challenging.
To summarise, happiness balances stability and change, as our emotional lives navigate a fundamental tension between needing consistency and embracing growth. Happiness plays a key role in managing this dynamic. There are two types of positive emotions: sustaining emotions, like calmness and connection, which restore us and promote flexibility; and striving emotions, like enthusiasm and drive, which focus our attention and push us towards goals. Great teams need both types. While striving fuels productivity and ambition, sustaining emotions support creativity, resilience and psychological safety, and both are essential for long-term success.
Nic Marks
