Positive psychology – fully baking the half-baked profession
Dr. Martin Seligman is credited with founding the field of positive psychology. He had an epiphany when he realized that the field of psychology was half-baked; it was half-baked in that in its effort to understand human behavior, he and his colleagues had only studied one side – the side of mental disease. Positive psychology challenges us to ask about the other side of the equation. What about the strength and virtue of humanity? Why is the best of humanity dismissed as a worthwhile pursuit of study? What’s to be learned from that? Out of these questions arose positive psychology.
The answer is simple; our relationship to our strength and what’s working is that it’s a mere outcome. It’s what’s supposed to happen and is not deserving of our attention. By default, we are only interested in what’s not supposed to happen; Seligman’s epiphany was the realization that his profession had only become interested in what’s wrong with people and did not focus on positive psychology. The book, A Life Worth Living challenges us to consider that it’s all just outcomes - the good and the bad, and that the only relevant question is whether what we have is what we want.
The best part is when you get that life that’s occurring before your eyes is just outcomes, then you don’t need to wait for the experts in the field of positive psychology, in any field for that matter to figure it out for you. You don’t need for Martin Seligman to make the findings of positive psychology accessible to you as if to put a blessing on the fact that it’s okay to feel good, to feel alive, and to live a great life. You can invent the future that you’re committed to and start to experience the strength, the virtue, and the joy of being human today. Positive psychology is a worthwhile pursuit, just don’t let it be a substitute for your own thinking and more importantly, for living your life.
Want to learn more about putting positive psychology into action? Get your copy of A Life Worth Living today!