What Makes it Positive Psychology?
Positive Psychology is about human potential, it tries to find out what makes people above average and it helps us to understand habits and behaviors that serve us and those that don't. Positive Psychology is concerned with the present and future, and it does not seek answers in the past like traditional psychology often does.
Positive Psychology emerged in the previous decade and it has been responsible for placing greater focus on the benefits of living a happy and fulfilled life. Traditional psychology’s ‘disease model’ is about complete focus on the negatives in human behaviour with very little regard for the benefits of cultivating positive and preventative behaviours towards a happier and more satisfying life. Positive Psychology's model includes human strengths without denying human weakness and uses positivity to prevent undesirable outcomes. Society’s negative focus can be traced back to evolution and the days of early psychology, with the result that we ended up believing that 'bad is stronger than good', or that bad is more authentic than good.
A call in the presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1998 for the study of joy and courage heralded the era of scientific study of health psychology – providing academic foundation for the long held beliefs that negative emotions can make us sick and positive emotions can be beneficial. Return to Home page.
Positive Psychology emerged in the previous decade and it has been responsible for placing greater focus on the benefits of living a happy and fulfilled life. Traditional psychology’s ‘disease model’ is about complete focus on the negatives in human behaviour with very little regard for the benefits of cultivating positive and preventative behaviours towards a happier and more satisfying life. Positive Psychology's model includes human strengths without denying human weakness and uses positivity to prevent undesirable outcomes. Society’s negative focus can be traced back to evolution and the days of early psychology, with the result that we ended up believing that 'bad is stronger than good', or that bad is more authentic than good.
A call in the presidential address to the American Psychological Association in 1998 for the study of joy and courage heralded the era of scientific study of health psychology – providing academic foundation for the long held beliefs that negative emotions can make us sick and positive emotions can be beneficial. Return to Home page.
Choosing to Flourish Rather Than Just Having an OK Life
Most people today rate their lives as "generally OK". Research tells us that they report that they 'are not unhappy' but that their lives seem fairly set and ordinary. Our view is that while we are all capable of having an "OK" lifestyle, we can all learn how to FLOURISH, experience daily joy and live life mindfully, make empowering life choices, enjoy meaningful relationships and live lives with purpose.
One of the key activities for flourishing is to make conscious choices when reacting to events in your life and to choose viewing both future and past experiences in a positive way. Return to Home page.
Being in The Zone
Discovering the enjoyment of life ‘In The Zone’ also called "Being in the Flow' – immersion in activities that bring total focus, creativity and personal fulfilment is one of the greatest contributors to authentic happiness. When one is in the Zone, time passes without notice, we have almost no sense of what is happening around us, we don't hear the phone ringing, we are so busy having fun that we don't want it to stop... you know it - we have all been there at some time. When people are immersed in doing something they love doing, benefits such as good health, longevity and fulfilling personal relationships become much more readily attainable. Return to Home page.
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