Answer to Question 1
One source is global judgment about one's life, one's assessment of his life satisfaction. Second is important domains in one's life such as relationships with family and friends, and subjectively assessing if things are going well. And last, whether or not one generally feels good, that is, has frequent positive affect coupled infrequent negative affect.
Answer to Question 2
Positive emotions can evoke a wide range of options through broadening and building. By broadening what Fredrickson calls thought-action repertoires we are able to build personal resources. Thus, positive emotions evoke more flexible thoughts about actions we can take that in turn build resources. That is, we can think of lots of activities that give us pleasure and ponder them before we decide what potentially resource-building action to take (e.g., call a friend, go shopping, go out to dinner, take a walk, etc.). From this perspective, negative emotions lead to short-term survival gains through facilitating the employment of specific narrow options and positive emotions lead to long-term survival through setting the stage for use of a general wide range of options.
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