"Positive Psychology is the science of wellbeing: a quest to find the universal truths which inform human progress and life satisfaction. It aims to promote and discover the factors which allow individuals and communities to thrive" Seligman 2002.
Positive psychology helps us consider the other side of mental health, the positive side, the side that asks "what makes life worth living?" Until Dr Seligman developed positive psychology, mental health had only ever been considered in terms of its problems, what was wrong with people and the treatments that would be needed to address these wrongs. Science has since found that focusing on the positive aspects of people and their lives can be more beneficial to improving their overall wellbeing.
"Positive Psychology emphasizes the necessity of understanding the factors that elevate human lives and exploring those features of life that make it not merely tolerable, but fulfilling, vital, and rich." (Steger, 2009)
Barbara Fredrickson’s 'Broaden and Build' theory suggests that the more we focus on the good, the positive and the strengths, the more we create positive emotions which helps us to see the best in situations, furthermore these emotions widen our perspective to make us better at problem solving.
“Positive emotions promote the discovery of novel and creative actions, ideas and social bonds which in turn build personal resources, ranging from physical and intellectual, to social and psychological resources that can be drawn on later to improve the odds of successful coping and survival” (Fredrickson, 2004).
In other words, we can train ourselves to be more resilient and live better lives, we just need to know how!
At Wings for Success Coaching and Consultancy Cate keeps up to date with the latest positive psychology research and uses tools that are proven to work. These tools are focused on increasing your flow, hope, resilience, positive emotions, happiness, self acceptance, self actualisation, meaning, motivation, strengths and life satisfaction.
A focus on strengths does not negate the existence of weaknesses, indeed as we work on your strengths your weaknesses will also improve, and where you wish to focus on a specific weakness, your strengths will support you to make the changes you desire.
The question to ask yourself is: what makes your life worth living?
With the skills Cate will share with you, you can start to appreciate more the parts of your life that are already good, build on the parts that could be better, and change the parts that no longer serve you.