What Is Positive Psychology And How Can It Improve Life
The formula for human happiness exists, and it is extremely simple: you need to learn positive thinking and apply it in life as often as possible.
But looking ahead, we will make a small remark: positive thinking does not imply that you need to force yourself to discount your problems, consider any situation initially as positive, or expect only positive solutions from yourself and others.
What Is Positive Psychology And How Can It Improve Life
Positive psychology is a whole psychological direction that studies the positive aspects of the human psyche. And if classical psychology is focused on diseases and negative conditions, then positive psychology is focused on methods that can help a person achieve happiness and well-being in life.
Positive thinking is rather one of the components of positive psychology. That is, numerous books on how positive thinking can change the fate of people, just stories from the authors’ life experience, but not scientifically proven facts. Such a method can help someone, but for someone it will not be able to significantly change the current state of affairs (and their perception).
The simplest example is affirmations. Positive thinking implies that it is enough for a person to say that he is happy to become so. One can argue with this statement: it is unlikely that you will become happy simply by repeating this statement. In order to make your life better, at least you need to make an effort and change something in it. Yes, on a person who can satisfy all his primary needs, such an affirmation can work. If a person has real problems that prevent him from living, the effect can be exactly the opposite.
In addition, positive psychology is not a tyranny of positive, which calls for abandoning all negative emotions in order to find happiness. On the contrary, she argues that negative emotions are of great value to humans and play an important role in our development. Many mindfulness techniques studied by positive psychology contain mechanisms for working with negative emotions and conditions, such as anxiety or depression.
Ideas of Positive Psychology
The most important discovery of positive psychology is the fact that a person can adjust the level of psycho-emotional well-being with his own actions. The main thing is to understand how to properly influence certain factors.
Each person is an individual in his perception and feeling of emotions, and happiness is no exception. Therefore, for each of us, something is hidden behind this concept. But still there are some mechanisms that work for all people very similarly. They are studied by positive psychology. These include the realization of strengths, the development of the ability to experience “positive” emotions, reduce the influence of negative emotions, and so on. 6 reasons why you should not always strive to be positive
3 main areas of study of positive psychology
Strengths of the Human Person
Strengths include qualities such as courage, a sense of humor, creativity, honesty, kindness, the ability to forgive oneself and other people, a realistic view of the surrounding reality. In general, this includes everything that is commonly called “virtues” in society. Such qualities help a person cope with unpleasant situations, objectively evaluate his strength, and maintain friendly relations with people. Having determined your strengths, you can take up their study and use them more in everyday life.
Positive emotions and a sense of happiness
This direction is expressed in satisfaction with life, optimism, a person’s self-confidence and self-reliance. Simply put, the more energetic, positive and self-confident you are, the more chances you have to achieve well-being.
Social support
Social support helps a person to feel happy, and this is a fact. The relationships that we establish with people around us give us the opportunity to let off steam, but our thoughts in order, listen to outside opinions about our problems and experience a wide range of positive emotions (for example, sincerity, affection, gratitude, and so on).
The main thing is to understand that your happiness (or unhappiness) is the result of your work on your life, and not at all by coincidence or the inevitability of fate. And the easiest way to achieve happiness is using your strengths and positive character traits.
[mc4wp_form id=”525″]
Leave a Reply