Positive Psychology 101: The Psychology of Thriving

Psychology has offered many people help, and continues to do so. Nothing here is intended to fault previous approaches to psychology.

However, we are experiencing a change of model that is bringing even more possibilities for people who want to go beyond 'fixing' into creative new lives. Positive psychology is one such approach.

"We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise that achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in individuals, families, and communities."

(Seligman, Martin E.P.; Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly)

Traditional psychology studies and classifies what has gone wrong. In the early days of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), Richard Bandler says he had great success treating phobics because he studies people who had overcome their phobia whereas psychology had only worked with people who had a problem. Positive Psychology takes a similar approach and studies success in many spheres.

The name, 'Positive Psychology' comes from Maslow, but the modern research has been pioneered by Martin Seligman and marked a growing emphasis within psychology to broaden away from a consideration of mental illness towards improving normal lives and cultivating talent.

In popular thought, Positive Psychology has become the psychology of happiness and quite revolutionary in the thought that happiness can be developed as a skill rather than as just the side effect of getting what we want. Positive Psychology goes beyond theory and actually provides tools with which we can improve our levels of happiness. It is important to realise that Seligman states that positive psychology is far more than making people happy.

“Happiness” is commonly defined as a state of well being or pleasurable experience, but this notion of happiness is only a small part of positive psychology. Positive psychology is the scientific study of the strengths and virtues that enable individuals and communities to thrive".(Seligman)

One of the major themes within positive psychology is overcoming learned helplessness. learned helplessness is very simply the belief, which may not be conscious, that we are victims and cannot exert control over our situations in life. Here is one example, perhaps someone stays in a job they hate and feels depressed. The depression is a side effect of the learned helplessness. This person's belief is that they 'have to' stay in their job, whereas with appropriate coaching they may find many more life affirming opportunities open to them.

Overcoming Learned Helplessness

This is the key point, isn't it? We don't really need another description of how people mess up. What we need are ways to overcome and 'thrive'.

The first step is to understand that we are not victims. We are not victims of other people, situations, or indeed victims of our own thinking. We can learn to create our lives.

We can learn to change our perspectives and step back from the limiting thoughts that elicit feelings that leave us (apparently) helpless. My preferred tools for this are meditation and coaching, but a search on 'overcoming learned helplessness' will lead you to many positive psychology sites that offer resources. One particularly elegant way of turning around limiting thoughts is The Work of Byron Katie. These are all practical ways of getting movement in any situation. They may appear simple but are not always easy, and require work to get the benefits; (so does anything worth having, fom playing the piano to writing a novel).

The essential point is that we are creators. We are just out of practice. Michael Neil tells a story about a lion cub brought up by sheep that believed it was a sheep too. It never was, really, but lived according to its beliefs. Then one day a lion came to the valley and showed the lion/sheep it's reflection in a pool. Things were never the same again.

Positive psychology is a set of tools and learnings that show you your reflection in the pool, and, in case you had not guessed, you are not a sheep!