I always felt there had to be another way. Shawn Achor put it well in his book “The Happiness Advantage” when he said the first way is to just carry on and languish in life where nothing ever changes, or you can get very anxious and let the world drag you down. Or there is a third way, a way in which you can work on improving your life and make a conscious effort to improve your overall happiness. I was always drawn to books, films and music which sent a message of happiness, but there just seemed so few of them.

A few years ago, a friend introduced me to Coursera, a website offering free short courses submitted by various Universities, mostly in the USA. It was an ideal place to learn about business and I took a few short courses on Leadership, strategy, and such like. And then I started looking around at what other courses were available and got engrossed in courses as diverse as Astronomy, History, Music and Psychology. A new world was opening for me, I was becoming addicted to learning.

In summer 2015 a course came up run by a guy called Raj Raghunathan entitled “If you’re so smart then why aren’t you happy?” Over 6 weeks I was totally absorbed in the concept of happiness and living a positive life. It was as though a course had been written just for me, I resonated with almost every concept. I wasn’t alone in a sea of negativity, there were others that thought like me, I just had to find them.

I saw an ad on Meet up about living a happier life, so I went along to a meeting run by Positive Psychology Learning, set up by two graduates, Dan and Lesley who had completed a Master’s degree in Positive Psychology. Suddenly I was in a room talking about happiness and positivity. I loved it, so much so that a year later I am on the same Master’s degree course.

One of the first things I noticed once I had started these courses is how my mindset changed and I was noticing so much more. I realised that there are a lot of positive people in my life but in the past, they were being drowned out by the negative ones. Just a simple change in mindset and I was now tuning in more to the positive people and appreciating what they have to offer.

I know I haven’t gone through some miracle transformation and I still get times when I get drawn in to negative situations where I find myself complaining a little more than I should. But I now feel I have a purpose and a direction. I want others to feel like I do and find out what happiness really is. I am at the beginning of an exciting journey, but so far am relishing every step.

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I have struggled with depression on and off for most of my life. To use a common metaphor, to me positive psychology means not having to apologise that you naturally see the glass as half empty, but not being stuck with that either. It provides a mechanism to try to fill the glass to it’s full potential rather than trying to make it less empty, and to be armed to refill it again and again when life drains it.

I came to psychology in my late teens as a depressed medical student reeling from a series of challenging life events. At that time medicine did not feel to me like it was really about helping and understanding people. I discovered psychology through a module in my second year of medicine. It was the lecture course most people skipped but I loved it. A supportive psychology lecturer who became a mentor helped me to switch coursesto study psychology to the horror of most people who knew me, who believed the only good reason for leaving medicine was if you were failing (which I wasn’t). I loved my psychology degree. With therapy my depression improved but in the words of Bono “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.

Next, I trained as a clinical psychologist. I think I was a pretty good therapist. I really cared about my clients and genuinely helped at least some of them. Again, I was blessed with a great mentor, Dr Paul Kennedy, who very sadly died in 2016. I still felt something was missing in my work. I did help some people cope with their problems and have better (or less worse) lives, but when I moved into psychology Isomehow expected something more. I expected to help myself and others answer the big questions; what’s my life about? How can I be the best me? What’s my purpose? I wanted to help people live meaningful fulfilled lives, not just be less unhappy.

At this point I became ill with Chronic Fatigue syndrome (C.F.S.) and had to leave work. For many years Istruggled physically and mentally. The Cognitive Behaviour Therapy techniques I knew and the wonderful support of my husband, friends and family helped me to regain a functioning life. I then went straight into having children and the setbacks of two bouts of post natal depression and the exhaustion of parenthood, making my stable CFS more
problematic. I worked my way back to functioning, controlled my negative thoughts, paced my activities and did the best I could. “ But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.

Over the last 10 years a renewed investment in my Christian faith and my discovery of Positive Psychology (the themes of which overlap hugely) have helped set me on a path that I at last feel is going in the right direction. I am now asking the right questions and have both spiritual and scientific avenues to explore these questions and their possible answers for me and for others.

Whilst I know that the majority of doctors and clinical psychologists also work to help people make the best of their lives, Positive Psychology, for me has brought something more than the very necessary treatment of ill health. It brings the promise of a better more meaningful life no matter where you start or what you have to endure. It means a paraplegic motorcyclist can be happier with his life than a city banker and a subsistence farmer more content than a millionaire.

Positive Psychology is a pathway that can help anyone improve their well-being, it is not separate from Psychology as a whole but part of what it has always really been about, understanding how humanity can flourish. I may not have quite found what I’m looking for but I think I’m getting there.

References
Haidt, J. (2006) The Happiness Hypothesis: Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern
Science. Arrow Books, London.
Seligman, M.E.P. (2002) Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realise
your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment. The Free Press, New York.

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As a child I was fascinated by people and their behaviour. I am a creative person, a fine artist amongst other things, and this makes me very reflective and curious. I also want to be happy. Who doesn’t? I’m a book worm and besides gorging myself on a diverse genre of books, as a young adult I also read Dickens and Orwell, so my social awareness was developed early on, and this has meant I have been determined since my school days to do good for others where I can and to live a life that makes me happy, one free of drudge and miserable obligation.

I am an empathetic person and so also would like to help others find their calling and happiness in life. Psychology back when I was at university was (from what I could tell) about ‘damaged minds’ and that didn’t appeal to me. Too negative. I wanted to make things better for people and couldn’t understand why we didn’t look at the positive opportunities instead. So eventually I went into human resources, hoping that I could influence the way organisations support employees in being at their best. It gave me the opportunity to study people, understand them better and develop strategies that made the workplace an enjoyable experience and not somewhere that you have to endure until retirement.

As you can imagine, as great as my ideals were, not everyone wanted to invest in putting the employee first and so my career has been both rewarding and frustrating. But as time went on I set out to look for new ways to focus my efforts on increasing employee happiness. I continued to read psychology books, articles, watch science programmes and TED talks and learn as much as I could about developments in the way we think, behave and function. One day in my quest for knowledge I came across the word “eudaimona” and I felt inspired. It gave me the energy to reflect on what it would mean for me to flourish and be the best that I could be. It gave me a direction in my work; to create a calling for myself that also helps others find their calling and happiness in life.

Finding the word “eudaimona” is when the road towards positive psychology started to become clearer. From that word I did some research and I bought a book specifically about positive psychology, and it stunned me. It was focusing on the exact area of interest that I have been craving for since I was a young girl. At least now I could read contemporary works on how to create human flourishing, and so I dived into it in earnest.

But I became impatient to start using this in my work, however most organisations just want traditional methods of employee engagement, which as all of us human resource professionals know, doesn’t work. This is when I thought it might be time for me to work to my own agenda and do what Ralph Waldo Emerson suggested, to go “where there is no path and leave a trail”. And this is also when I decided to study positive psychology via the MAPP course.

So I am now embarking on a new stage of my life where my self-concordant goals are simple; to do what I love by using positive psychology to enhance flourishing in employees and in others in general. So, what does positive psychology really mean to me? It means I am finally being my authentic self, where I can see a way of really making a difference to others lives, to contribute to a really exciting field of study, and I can wake up every day and look forward to learning more about myself, the world and savour the fact that it is never too late to make a difference.

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Positive psychology is the field that upended my world ten years ago, gave my life new purpose, my job new meaning, my friends more importance, and my loved ones more gratitude.  In short, it rocked my existence and changed me in so many ways that I don’t know who I would be today, personally or professionally, without it.

More yes, less no

Once you are exposed to the research on how to live a fulfilling and flourishing life, you can’t unring that bell.  You have heard it and you are now accountable to do something with it.  For example, Chris Peterson was one of the major instructors during my year in the first MAPP program at the University of Pennsylvania in 2005 and 2006, and he was famous for announcing in almost every lecture, “Positive Psychology boils down to one phrase: Other people matter.”  I heard repeatedly that cultivating the right relationships would bear significant fruit in life, so I changed my work schedule to include more time for friends and less time in the office.  I said “yes” to things more often than I said “no.”

Happiness then success

I also was exposed to the research on how success in life is preceded by happiness, and that we don’t become happy because we are successful, we become successful because we are happy.  That altered the fundamental way I use goal-setting in my life and coaching practice, and even resulted in my Capstone project, which became  ‘Creating Your Best Life’ (Sterling), the first evidence-based book to connect the science of flourishing with the science of goal accomplishment.  Marty Seligman praised the book in “Flourish,” noting that I had “added a major missing piece to the world of coaching.”

TED talk on grit

Positive Psychology also includes the research on resilience and grit, which has changed the ways in which I view parenting.  I now see it as a necessity that we raise our children to court and learn from failure, not bubble wrap and prevent them from feeling the pain of taking risks and picking themselves up.  Angela Duckworth’s research on grit, which she was doing at Penn during my MAPP year, has become such a passion of mine that I recently gave a TEDxt talk in New York City about the three things I think everyone can do to cultivate grit, which I will be elaborating on in my upcoming book, “Authentic Grit.”  I have even launched an Authentic Grit Challenge, which anyone can participate in by clicking here.

A transformative and powerful field

Positive Psychology is a transformative and powerful field that now challenges people to look at what is “good,” and to amplify that instead of trying to fix what’s broken or “bad.”  If we could all turn our lens in that direction, regardless of what we do in life, we might be filled with more gratitude and awe, and less fury and criticism – qualities we couldn’t need more in the world right now.

About the author: Caroline Adams Miller is a leader in the field of positive psychology,  is world renowned for her research and work in the areas of grit, goal achievement, success and happiness carolinemiller.com

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As a mental health nursing tutor, I have considered what we do and how we help individual’s on their journey. many times I have discovered it is the smile, the kind action such as making a cup of tea that gives us the entrance to be challenging towards others. We often have to help the individual to deal with their emotional responses, mostly our methods were reactive, i.e. a problem occurred and we helped the person to find a way through retrospectively. This may lead to giving the person a greater understanding for their own future. A few years ago now I read a radical theory that you can be both mentally ill and mentally healthy at the same time (Keith Tudor). This meant that I could start trusting my own patient’s to do their best (mentally healthy) to grow and at the same time understand that this would help the individual to deal with their mental illness issues.

Finding meaning in life

Then a little while later I was to go through a series of bereavements, including my wife (I was not yet 40). I personally went into a period of decline as I tried to find meaning to life. I was to begin understanding meaning one day when I was in my sister-in-laws house and her four year old wanted me to build Lego with her. I had nothing better to do so built, she knocked it down. She encouraged me more and she knocked it down again and started to giggle. Okay, so I built again from floor to ceiling, she knocked it down and giggled and then I begun to giggle. Before I knew what was happening I was laughing. Later I went for a walk past the farm where my wife grew up, and then I cried. It was a liberating couple of experiences. Today that little girl is 21 years old, but meaning for me was discovered in laughter and tears, that we all go through good times and bad times.

Applying positive psychology

I saw a flyer for the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) and decided to enrol, thinking this will give me a couple more tools I can teach my students to help them in their pursuit of care. I enrolled and joined the programme, only to discover I had missed the concept of “applied” and that this meant examining my own self using tools such as blogging, journaling, random acts of kindness, gratitude and much more. So here I was on a course that I thought would teach me positivity as a way forward, it didn’t! Rather it taught me balance, understanding that bad things happen, but that we can have tools to help us move forward. At the same time, it taught me that many of these tools can be applied in radical ways.

Emotional regulation

Emotional regulation for me is a major issue, whilst treating those labelled borderline personality disorder, I see where this goes wrong radically. You get to thinking that’s just them, but reflecting back it’s not, it’s all of us to a greater or lesser extent. I was intrigued and annoyed to be taught positive emotions, but recently, Robert Biswas-Diener wrote about the positive side of negative emotions. I came to the conclusion that all emotions are good, however, it is what we do with these that matter.

Mental health and illness and positive psychology

So positive psychology has begun to crystallise my understanding that we all have the potential for mental health and mental illness (Corey Keyes), that this incorporates emotional understanding and that this is best expressed through positive relationships. For me all of this leads to a willingness to flourish in the understanding that sometimes things will go wrong, but at those times I now have more tools to help me. Now I have my MAPP will I ever suffer with depressive symptoms again? The answer is “probably”, but will they be as disabling? I believe the answer is “no!”. So it is that I am incorporating positive psychology into my teaching, after all I have found meaning in it and I remember telling more than one person it is simply a life changing experience.

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Positive psychology is a great field to work in because I find that I’m constantly getting confronted with the upside of things; what is right and what is going well.

Much like Martin Seligman confesses in his book ‘Learned Optimism’, I wasn’t always looking for what was going right in my life and trying to ameliorate (and focus on) these things. Instead my default mode was to look for what was wrong. I was essentially a fault-finder, and still can be if the situation asks for it. However, if you are involved in the field long enough, you’ll automatically start to develop a healthy positivity bias that allows you to have a realistic outlook on life, which default mode is geared towards the positive.

The insights that science of positive psychology have provided me with have heavily influenced my lifestyle, interactions with other people, decision-making process and my overal well-being. What I think that contributed most to this is that I wasn’t just following some random advice from self-help books or the like, but that I got a sense of why certain interventions, or ways of doing things, repeatedly get a certain outcome. It’s like you’re learning about the mechanism that guides your everyday behaviour and slowly discovering how to master it, instead of the other way around. This, in my opinion, is invaluable.

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For me, the concept of positive psychology has grown to hold two meanings. In my mind, it has developed in popularity in recent years, to such an extent as to have become a victim of its own success in certain aspects. Scientifically grounded positive psychology, when understood and applied correctly, offers wonderful opportunities for people. On the flip side, however, when distorted, it presents risks and a potential for causing harm.

Breaking positive psychology down to its most basic concepts, it is the study and application of the aspects of human psychology and behaviour which contribute, not only to psychological well-being, but also to people’s ability to prosper in a challenging world.

Confusion about positive psychology

The risks arise when people confuse positive psychology with the concept of manifesting your greatest wishes and desires through ‘the power of positive thinking and self-affirmations’. Sadly, there is no scientific evidence to suggest that one can manifest a Lamborghini by sitting into your floral patterned recliner and imagining it as a bucket seat in a speeding supercar, whilst repeating the mantra that you are getting better in every way, every day. This is not positive psychology.

Having, or developing the self-confidence and optimism to go forth into the world and create opportunities for oneself to earn the money to buy a Lamborghini, along with the resilience to overcome unexpected challenges along the way, is more akin to putting positive psychology into action.

Whilst it is wonderful that the internet and the world of our interconnected social media disperse invaluable knowledge so readily, it is not so wonderful when misinformation makes its way into the accepted knowledge base. Internet memes and motivational posters, which promote a one size fits all notion that everyone can vastly improve their life by simply by being positive, does the science of positive psychology no good, when presented as being the basis of the field.

We don’t have to be happy all the time

It is OK not to be positive some times and it should be expected that one might not always feel positive. For a person suffering from depression, the last thing they want to hear is ‘Smile and everything will be OK’. If it were that simple, then there would be no depression and people who outwardly portray themselves as being the life and soul of the party would not succumb to the tragedy of suicide. Indeed, as research indicates, a person with low self-esteem who attempts to force themselves to be positive by repeating positive affirmations, may actually end up feeling worse. It seems that it is not that easy to kid yourself. [1]

Applying positive psychology takes time, work and it is not necessarily an easy, or painless path. It is not about fooling yourself into believing untruths. It is about learning, developing and nurturing skills to allow a person to operate at their optimal level – not a level which an internet meme states that they should operate at.

With regards to my path, I consider myself fortunate to have developed my interest in positive psychology from the perspective of someone who has a background in studying ill-health and disorder. While my undergraduate studies taught me how disorder and ill-health can teach us so much about the workings of the mind, the primary focus was not upon such topics. The primary topics of focus were upon human interaction in a social world, along with child development, the study of the cognitive mind and biological psychology. When I progressed to a M.Sc. in Applied Psychology, the primary focus was most certainly upon ill-health and disorder.

During that time, I advanced my knowledge of how complex such matters are and likewise, how crucial scientific validation of treatments and interventions is. Importantly, I also learned that I did not wish for a focus upon disorder to be the main emphasis of my career. As my undergraduate degree had taught me, there is so much more to human psychology than disorder.

The grounded theory of laughter

With this in mind, I set out to progress to doctoral level studies, not with a focus upon ill-health, but with a focus upon behaviour which permeates daily life, but which we tend to take for granted. I chose to learn more about a topic which has always been close to my heart – that of laughter. From my perspective, I see laughter as being obvious in its presentation, but not necessarily in its function. I put together a proposal to carry out PhD research into the topic and as of now, my research is still ongoing.

Interestingly, I did not come to study laughter with a ‘positive’ hat on. Rather, I am researching the topic from a ‘Grounded Theory’ perspective, an approach which requires me to allow the most salient features of laughter to emerge from the data which I collect, rather than a situation in which I set out with an assumption, or set of assumptions about laughter, which I would then aim to verify through experimental studies.

During the course of my research, I have discovered many aspects of laughter which are relevant to positive psychology, both from the perspective of laughter being a factor in promoting well-being, but also, from the perspective of how we must be cognisant that laughter isn’t necessarily a one size fits all panacea for psychological ill-health. I look forward to sharing these aspects with the community of the Positive Psychology People, along with other, equally important and interesting aspects of laughter, through forthcoming blogposts.

About the author: Glen Duggan  can be contacted via his website laughterresearch.com where you can listen to and download fascinating podcast interviews with a variety of experts and entrepreneurs, for whom laughter is a central part of their work.

[1]   Wood, J.V., W.Q.E. Perunovic, and J.W. Lee, Positive Self-Statements: Power for Some, Peril for Others. Psychological Science, 2009. 20(7): p. 860-866.

Photograph by Cheriejoyful  This image can be found here https://flic.kr/p/aaThYm. the link to the license is here https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ 

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For over 20 years an inner voice called for me to study and learn; there was unfinished business in my education and development. I started to use strengths assessments for team development and recruitment in late 2006; this was my first glimpse at a topic which was part of a science that would draw me back in to formal study and the pursuit of a Master’s degree in Applied Positive Psychology.

Wise Words

A very wise man once told me that the key to lifetime development is interest. That wise man was my paternal grandfather and my interest now had a name, positive psychology. From the concept of developing our best selves to the positive organisational tools of Appreciative Inquiry, I was familiar with the guiding principle that if we can understand the best of ourselves we can engage, connect and perform in a way that is authentic, meaningful and highly productive. I have been a positive psychologist all of my life, although I have only had a label for it for the last 9 years.

Rebalance

For me psychology is neither positive nor negative, however the traditional medical models and research in psychology have focused on the reduction of pain and suffering in those presenting with mental illness or disease so I guess for now the label is rebalancing. However, I hope that in time the need for a signpost of ‘positive psychology’ disappears as the discipline embraces the continuum of psychology which is part of us all.

A Gift

I have both a personal and professional relationship with positive psychology. My professional self works as a coach, consultant and trainer specialising in Leadership and Career Development. My work is centred in the technology and health sector although the challenges faced by leaders and executives seem increasingly universal, how do I achieve more with less with increasing demands on my time and little resources or energy left over for personal development? As a result, my work often focuses on small, positive, changes that have a fundamental impact to well-being, team engagement and organisational performance. If I could give my clients a gift it would be a bag of full stops; affording people a moments to pause and present their best response to a situation opposed to their instinctive reaction.

Research

My research interests are in wholehearted leadership and the behaviours which allow some organisations to succeed even in the most vulnerable of times, I hope to be able to share research findings later this year (Sept 2015). It was my personal journey that led to research of vulnerability and how some are able to experience a ‘wondrous day’ when most experience a ‘perfect storm’ when the conditions of vulnerability, being uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure (Brown 2012) present themselves. In time I hope to unlock the darkness that has been the source of so much personal pain and suffering, my black dog, chronic melancholic depression.

For me positive psychology is about opening the ears of my heart and listening to the master inside.

About The Author: Dean is a UK based Coaching Psychologist with over 20 years’ experience in building, recruiting and training high performing teams. Dean has qualifications in HR, Career Management, Strengths-based Coaching and Applied Positive Psychology. He has worked with 400 people in over 1,000 hours of coaching since 2010 and has published two books. www.DeanWeller.co.uk

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Career Suicide?

Around six years ago, I decided I didn’t want to be an academic any more. I had studied, researched and taught various topics in psychology for twenty years and I had reached a point where I realised my heart wasn’t in it any more. I was looking for something else, but I didn’t know what. So I left my comfortable full-time academic teaching post without a job to go to. Some might describe it as career suicide. Others might describe it as a leap of faith. I described it as ‘Operation Freefall’. It was a challenging time and a decision that had a major impact on those around me from both a personal and financial perspective.

A Lesson in Positive Psychology

Fast forward six years and I find myself back in academia, teaching and researching psychology. So did I go through all that for nothing? Not at all.  At the very least, it was a lesson in Positive Psychology. The decision, the actions that followed it and the subsequent consequences allowed a personal exploration of courage, trust, positive relationships, compassion, hope, resilience and change… all in the pursuit of a meaningful life. It was a journey that brought me to a place where I could return to academic psychology from a more ‘enlightened’ perspective. High Wycombe of all places!

‘It’s Just a Ride’

In my current role, I now teach and supervise students on a Masters course in Applied Positive Psychology (one of only a handful in the world!) at a completely different university to where I had been working before. When I had decided to walk away from academia all those years before, I had no inclination that this was what lay ahead. However, I value the opportunity that decision now gives me to draw upon my training and personal experience to support others wishing to explore this dynamic and evolving discipline.

Positive Psychology, to me, is about the journey. As Bill Hicks, a US comedian insightfully observed about the world, “it’s just a ride”. If that’s true then positive psychology is, amongst other things, all about helping us to enjoy that ride.

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In pursuit of the good life.

To me Positive Psychology is the application of virtue and strength in the pursuit of the good life. It is finding meaning in being and being mindful that achieving the good life takes work and practice – it is a process, not an end unto itself. It is research that has focused on discovering what is right and what is required to be well and that this is more than just the absence of disorder and disease. It is evidence of the zeitgeist of our time, our desire to be better, to do more, to reach higher and to do this with contemplation and reflection. It is the application of research in the real world, with an eye to increasing human flourishing.

My passion

My passion is in the creation and application of strengths interventions in education. I believe that by way of engaging students with strengths-based exercises in the classroom, students become more aware of not only their own strengths, but the strengths of others. Through exploration of strengths, students begin to adopt a language of strengths that facilitates the extrapolation and application of personal strengths in their world outside of school. Further, strength work in schools enables teachers to look at well-being from a positive perspective and to focus on wanted behaviour instead of unwanted behaviour. Importantly strength interventions applied in school enables educators to look at the behaviour they want through a focus on the strengths students already possess. On a broader scale, there are benefits to the whole school in adopting an ethos of character strengths and their application.

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