Past studies of psychology have focused on human flaws, overcoming debilitating symptoms, avoiding pain and escaping unhappiness. A new branch of psychology is on the rise: positive psychology. Positive psychology focuses on well-being, contentment, and the pursuit of happiness. Instead on focusing on how to fix negative things in our lives, positive psychology targets how we can expand on our overall well-being to feeling better than "not sad" or "not upset."
Martin Seligman is widely seen as the father of contemporary positive psychology. In 1998, he was elected President of the American Psychological Association which was when positive psychology became the theme of his presidency.
The first real interaction that I had with positive psychology was last semester in one of my first year seminar classes called Health and Happiness. My teacher was a psychologist for the anesthesiology department at the medical school here at Michigan. She believed, like many positive psychologists, that we should focus on ways of becoming more happy instead of just less sad.
One of the first things we learned about was mindfulness, a large topic in positive psychology. Mindfulness is a psychological process of being aware. In psychology it's described as being present and in the moment while being aware of yourself and things around you. Our lives can get so fast paced and busy at times, but it is important for our well-being to stop once and awhile and be mindful of our experiences to better enjoy them.
Other things we talked about to increase happiness and well-being was getting involved in positive service. We learned about the health and psychological positive effects of mediation and spirituality. The psychological process of forgiveness was discussed in class as a way of healing ourselves from grief and burdens that we may carry with us. Self-care was a topic brought up where we learned the importance of eating heathy to help lift up the mind, body and soul.
We were taught about the different positive psychology interventions that have been vastly used in research and treatment all over the world. We acted as our own guinea pigs, attempting the interventions ourself. We kept a gratitude journal everyday for 30 days where at the end of each day we had to write three things down that we were grateful for. Gratitude journals have been widely studies in medical research to help patients suffering from cancer to chronic pain.
As a challenge, we were assigned to perform acts of kindness everyday for a week and reflect on how it made us feel after performing the acts. Research has shown that performing acts of kindness can increase overall positive affect(emotion). We also journaled one thing a day that we savored. To savor something we were supposed to stop our busy day and enjoy a specific thing or situation by taking in all the different ways it affected our senses like taste, touch, and smell.
It was interesting to see the connection between positive psychology and medical research that has helped people with medical conditions and disabling symptoms. Emotions and the body are extremely connected, and research has proved that the better we feel mentally, the better we will feel physically.
