# Positive Psychology



## MattFoley (Dec 5, 2009)

I've been looking into this thing called positive psychology. This guy martin seligman noticed that the whole history of psychology was concerned with mentall illness and focusing on all the negative aspects of the mind. So he started doing research on what normal people in everday situations can do to increase happiness. So its this whole field called positive psycholgy. It really makes a whole lot more sense to me than a lot of the focus of other parts of psychology. 

I heard this story about this guy who went to africa and took part in this tribal ceremony for depression where the entire village takes the day off to focus on you and cheers you on and makes sacrifices for you and in general makes you the most important thing in the village. The guy asked the tribal leader why they use this ceremony instead of allowing western psychologists to help and the leader said that they will not let psychologist in the village. He said that psychologists make you sit in a room for hours at a time focusing and talking about all of your problems. They make you think about all the things that are wrong with you and they center your attention on all of the negative things in your life. All it did was wind up making the villagers miserable. So the tribe uses this uplifting ceremony, something positive to overwhelm the negative in their lives. 

I just thought that was a really cool story and it kind of made me think well yeah, that makes perfect sense. Obviously we can't always avoid our troubles but making them define us is the worst thing we could possibly do. We all need to find things that are so positive in our lives that they make the negative parts seem insignifigant. 

I've really been trying lately to be a more positive person and honestly it feels good. I have a tendency to become negative when I lose focus of whats important and I get into too much of a routine. I stop wanting to be a better person and I stop wanting to grow. I think its really important to have that desire for personal growth. I want to be a better person. I want to help strangers and smile and ask them how their day is. I want to give to people because it feels good. i want to stop being a slacker at work and get rid of the negative things in my life that I can control. I want to do something every day that i'm passionate about. 

So back to the positive psychology thing. This ties in, trust me. Theres this thing called the character strengths and Virtues book that the whole positive psychology field has collectively put together. It details i think 20 or so character traits that are associated with happiness. When I first saw this I didn't think too much about it but I kind of got this idea in my head later on. These characteristics are laid out as simply as can be. I keep thinking that I should make it my goal to develope each one of these traits and to do it in a kind of systematic way. I don't know, it sounds exciting to me for some reason. I just think about focusing on one trait each day and then over the years developing each one. I think it would be amazing to chronical it and see how it would work. It feels really good to think about.

Anybody else learned or heard about positive psychology?


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## MattFoley (Dec 5, 2009)

Can somebody help me embed this video. For some reason i've been taught how to do this several times but I still can't get it. 

anyways, Here's martin seligman. The father of positive psychology. This isn't some fruity guru stuff. The last half is much better than the first. This is what psychology should be. I'll write more later.


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## MattFoley (Dec 5, 2009)

Martin seligmans website. Good questionares on here.

www.authentichappiness.com


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## delirium (Jun 24, 2009)

Thanks becks.






You can embed this by pasting the alphanumeric code, follow "v=" in the youtube address, between (YOUTUBE) and (/YOUTUBE) (replacing the round brackets with square brackets).


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## MattFoley (Dec 5, 2009)

delirium said:


> Thanks becks.


Thanks delirium  I swear I tried that but I must be jinxed.


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## bevo (Jan 23, 2010)

I have done this my whole life! It makes perfect sense to me. I think the key is to have the *desire* to change and not just sit around hoping to change. If you are passive with SA there will never be a change.


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