For a while now I have been meaning to write a post about Positive Psychology 101. And even though I know what positive psychology is essentially,
I was stumped when I had to define it. Then the other day I came across a tweet
which lead to an article about positive psychology and the Olympics and the
definition the writer used was so elegant I just had to quote her.
The first two paragraphs of her article had me nodding my head like
one of those nodding bulldog car toys. Nowadays, there is a lot of talk about
positivity, positive thinking and just being happy/positive etc. It is really easy to
get confused and assume they are all mean the same thing so I was very glad
when right away the writer, Louisa Jewell distinguished between positive thinking
i.e. “the secret” and other similar notions and positive psychology. And as I said
earlier it is the most elegant definition I have heard till date.
So “positive psychology is the scientific study of
psychological well-being" as opposed to the traditional psychological model of
mental illness. Additionally, it is important to “note the emphasis on ‘scientific’
which means it is based in science and empirical research" and it is therefore separate from other fluffy feel good notions. It is also not the
same thing as positive thinking, or being positive and smiley all the time.
That said, I have included a TED Talks
video by Martin Seligman, largely considered the father of positive psychology
to further expatiate on the topic.
I hope this clarifies things, in any case there would most likely be a follow up post to this.
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