The Best Bunny and the Most Underrated Form of Self-Care

Hey fellow downshifters.

This week I’m riding a jubilant wave of music and rhythm, courtesy of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show. In under fifteen minutes, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio offered an exuberant celebration of Latin music, colonial history, and cultural pride. He humanized people who are being publicly dehumanized and invited us into an expansive vision of an America powered by love.

It was the third most-watched halftime show in history. Many declared, “joy is a form of resistance.”

I’d go further: joy is the most underrated form of self-care.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s Broaden-and-Build Theory suggests that positive emotions like joy, interest, and excitement literally expand our awareness. They help us think more flexibly, consider new possibilities, and try new actions. In the short term, joy doesn’t help us survive a threat—in fact, it pulls our focus away from danger. But over time, it builds internal resources: perspective, creativity, connection. Those resources outlast the feeling itself.

And they compound. Positive emotion builds well-being, which makes more positive emotion possible. It’s an upward spiral.

Trauma does the opposite. Survivors often describe constriction—a tightening. The nervous system narrows its scope, prioritizes survival, reduces flexibility. That narrowing makes sense in danger. But it’s the opposite of the expansion that joy creates.

Here’s the part I don’t think we talk about enough: joy is a skill.

In clinical training, we’re taught to assess strengths. But no one ever said to me, “If you want your clients to heal, you need to help them practice joy.” And yet, if Fredrickson is right, feeling good isn’t frivolous. It changes how we see ourselves and the world. It teaches the nervous system that safety and pleasure are possible. It strengthens relationships. It increases flexibility.

Ironically, one of positive psychology’s biggest names, Martin Seligman, first became famous for his research on learned helplessness. In his early studies, dogs in cages were exposed to uncontrollable shocks when they tried to escape. Eventually they stopped trying—even when the door was open and the shock was turned off. They had learned that nothing they did mattered. That framework became foundational for understanding depression.

Decades later, Seligman shifted his focus toward flourishing and developed the PERMA model of well-being:

• Positive Emotion – joy, pride, belonging, anticipation

• Engagement – being absorbed in something that matters

• Relationships – feeling connected and valued

• Meaning – a sense of purpose

• Accomplishment – mastery and progress

Now back to Bad Bunny. His halftime show hit every PERMA note—for himself, for his community, and arguably for the rest of us. Searches for “learn Spanish” and “Puerto Rico history” spiked after the performance. In fifteen minutes, we didn’t just feel good. We expanded.

That’s what joy does.

Your Downshifting prompt this week:
What’s your PERMA?

Open your journal, Notes app, or the back of an envelope and ask:

• When did I last feel genuine positive emotion?

• When was I deeply engaged?

• When did I feel connected?

• Where am I finding meaning?

• What have I accomplished lately—even in small ways?

Then ask yourself: what would it take to recreate even a piece of that?

You’re not indulging yourself. You’re building capacity.

And in a world that profits off your depletion, that’s a radical act.