1) INTRODUCTION TO POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Course Aims

To improve overall wellbeing through developing an understanding of positive psychology and by practicing some individual exercises.

Aims of the Course

We hope by the end of this course you will have:

• Gained knowledge and understanding of positive psychology.
• Increased your self-awareness of the way in which you relate to yourself and others.
• Learnt skills and exercises to enhance positive experiences, interactions and events.
• Found out your personal strengths and explored how to put them into practice.
• Considered personally identified roadblocks towards greater wellbeing and how to overcome these.

This course also has a discussion forum, if you’re interested in participating you can access this using this button.

Go to forum (insert link)

Discover More

A quick exercise to start, if you want to, is the ‘Good Things in Life’ activity. All too often we find ourselves focusing on the negative things that have happened to us on a day to day basis e.g. the bus was late, the queue was long etc. Instead it can be beneficial to concentrate on the things that have gone well e.g. a favourite song on the radio, catching up with a friend, enjoying a meal, watching something you enjoy, learning something new, achieving a goal or good weather.

If you fancy it write down 3 good things that have happened today that you may have overlooked. If you’re struggling to think of things that have gone well today, think about things from the past week or think about things that you’re grateful for. You may also like to read or print off the pdf below to help you to do this. It repeats the same information with spaces to give your answers for the next few weeks.

Good things in life (133.73kB)

Consider More:

1. Which parts of this course are you most interested in learning about?
2. How did you feel after having a go at the ‘Good Things in Life’ activity?

Course Content

About the Course

This introduction to positive psychology topic will look at the concepts of happiness and wellbeing, subjective wellbeing in relation to research and a few myths. Then we will briefly touch on the history of happiness and how our understanding has developed over time with the research. This will lead on to the development of PERMA; the wellbeing theory developed by Martin Seligman who has brought the spotlight back on what makes people generally happier in life within positive psychology research. PERMA stands for Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. Then we will look at the 6 main topics that make up the course as well as the tools and strategies that will be considered in more depth throughout the course.

The 6 main topics

This course looks at 6 topics within positive psychology as well as tools and strategies that are evidence-based to help us toward improved wellbeing and to flourish in our lives.

Strength

Here the focus is on exploring strengths in everyday actions, the value of knowing your strengths and weaknesses, ways to identify your top strengths and how to build upon them.

Positive Experiences

Here the emphasis i on exploring the meaning of positive experiences, hopes and fears around considering them, why they are important to well being, the advantages of negative experiences of emotion and what brings you positive experiences.

Self Compassion

This is about exploring the difference between compassion and kindness, barriers to self-compassion, why it is important to well being and how we can foster our own self-compassion.

Optimism and Pessimism

Here we look at exploring optimism and pessimism as explanatory styles and how these influence well being, considering the helpful and unhelpful aspects of both and ways to balance our approach to past negative experiences.

Positive Relationships

This focuses on exploring your current positive relationships and what the foundations of these are, considering the way that we interact with others and how to develop active, constructive responding.

Mindset

Here we explore where our mindset comes from, the difference between a fixed and growth mindset, the helpful and unhelpful aspects of both, how to develop a growth mindset and the benefits of this to our well being.

Activities Within the Course

The activities within this course are intended to help with self-reflection and personal growth. You will often be asked to consider how you think and feel about the activities and topic content. Not everything in the course is going to be helpful for you, it is individual which tools and strategies will bring the most benefit. It is recommended that you try everything within the course at least once and then continue with the activities that have helped you the most.

Tools and Strategies

Additional Topics

As well as the main topics the course also covers the following tools and strategies:

Good Things in Life

An exercise designed to help us stop and think about the good things that happen to us. Sometimes we can get caught up in the negatives of life and forget to stop and appreciate that lots of things go well too. A good example of this is writing off the whole day because of a bad 30 minutes; we may have had a terrible journey to work, the traffic was bad, the bus was late and we were left standing in the rain. The rest of the day may feel bogged down by this but we can stop and try to think about what went well; the meeting that day was constructive, lunch was enjoyable and a friend called to catch up.

Flow

This is a state of ‘being at one with’ what we’re doing whether that is reading, doing puzzles, creating art, listening to music, working, walking in nature etc. In this state we lose our sense of self to what we’re doing and typically we are so immersed in it that we lose track of time. Later when we reflect on how we felt during these activities we tend to feel that it was a positive experience and that we enjoyed it even if these emotions weren’t at the forefront at the time.

Savouring or Dampening

Positive experiences can be savoured through a variety of strategies; taking a mental picture, expressing our emotions physically (clapping, jumping for joy etc.), stopping to congratulate ourselves, counting our blessings and sharing the positive experience with others. Dampening is the opposite of this and can be a barrier to savouring, examples of this include; negative mental time travel, suppressing emotions, fault finding and distraction.

Random Acts of Kindness

We all know that we feel good when we do something nice for someone else whether that be giving a gift, helping someone to pick up things they’ve dropped or being there for a friend who is having a hard time. Incorporating random acts of kindness into our lives can bring about positive experiences in this way whilst helping us develop and maintain positive relationships. This effect is also beneficial for our physical health and research suggests random acts of kindness reduces stress levels and helps to undo the negative impact of stress on our bodies.

Gratitude

Stopping to appreciate what we are grateful for in life can be very rewarding and bring about positive experiences. It is good for our relationships as we begin to notice the support that others around us are offering or providing, it can remind us of the times when things went well and times when we anticipate others would be grateful to us. Also it can be as simple as being thankful that the weather is nice that day, that somebody held the door open for us or that we haven’t had to visit the dentist in a while.

Learning a New Skill

When we are faced with a new skill we want or need to learn there are ways of going about it that improve our chances of success. The way that we try to tackle this is often based on how our parents, teachers and peers, during our childhood, interacted with and reacted to us in the face of something we found challenging. If we can identify our patterns in learning a new skill we can try to take a different approach in the future.

What is Positive Psychology?

Overview

This introduction to positive psychology topic will look at the concepts of happiness and wellbeing, subjective wellbeing in relation to research and a few myths. Then we will briefly touch on the history of happiness and how our understanding has developed over time with the research. This will lead on to the development of PERMA; the wellbeing theory developed by Martin Seligman who has brought the spotlight back on what makes people generally happier in life within positive psychology research. PERMA stands for Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment. Then we will look at the 6 main topics that make up the course as well as the tools and strategies that will be considered in more depth throughout the course.

What is Positive Psychology?

Historically the field of psychology has focused heavily on the study of those experiencing mental distress. Humanistic psychology began to look at psychological wellbeing, and positive psychology has further developed this field of study.

Now that positive psychology has become well established, the research seeks to answer the following questions:

• What leads to some people experiencing positive growth in the face of trauma?
• What makes some people more resilient and better able to deal with repeated set-backs?
• Are these characteristics able to be defined, measured and cultivated?

Substantial research has emerged indicating that positive psychology tools and strategies have a significant beneficial impact on personal wellbeing. These tools and strategies were designed to improve wellbeing for everyone; whether or not they are currently experiencing mental health difficulties.

They help to increase the amount of positive experiences we have, assist in developing our self-awareness and provide opportunities to challenge unhelpful habits.

Happiness and Subjective Wellbeing

What is Happiness?

Surveys have asked people what is meant by happiness, and the usual responses fall within three domains: a state of joy or other positive experiences; being satisfied with one’s life; the absence of depression or other negative experiences.

Wellbeing on the other hand tends to evoke a more holistic approach and looks less at positive and negative experiences, incorporating instead other factors including; physical health problems, social relationships, environmental stressors, income etc.

Within the positive psychology literature happiness is often used synonymously with the scientific term ‘Subjective wellbeing’. In this sense they are used interchangeably. Subjective wellbeing, however, refers to people’s evaluation of their lives. How they appraise their lives through their thoughts and feelings.

Discover More:

There are many myths about what will make us happy, the cards below have true or false statements on then that explore a few of these myths. When you have decided whether the statement is true or false, select or click + icon below to reveal the answer.

History of Happiness

Why Study Happiness?

The overall historical trend has been that society is doing better; more people are able to meet their basic needs, are living longer and have better health. As a result we are more and more interested in how to live a satisfying and fulfilling life.

History of Happiness

Philosophical and psychological pursuits of happiness began thousands of years ago. It is Western culture’s commitment to happiness which is fairly modern. Some of the schools of thought behind the study of happiness are listed below:

• Chinese Schools of Philosophy; Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.
• Ancient Greek Philosophy; Socrates, Epicurus, Aristotle, Plato.
• Islamic Philosophy; Abu Hamid al-Ghazali.
• William James (Psychologist and Philosopher – ‘the first positive psychologist’).
• Logotherapy; Viktor Frankl – ‘on meaning’. Humanistic psychology – 1950’s; Maslow.

If you would like to know more, when you have finished our course you might like to read the information on the Pursuit of Happiness website. If so go to Pursuit of Happiness (.org)

Briefly, however historically there were 2 traditions of happiness; Hedonism and Eudaimonia. Henderson & Knight (2012) review the concepts of Eudaimonia and Hedonism and highlight some of the recent debate about the use of these terms. In spite of the debate it is generally accepted that both describe ways of living and behaving and both are pathways to wellbeing. See below to find out more.

• Hedonistic tradition is associated to people such as Locke, Epicurus and Bentham and fundamentally associates wellbeing to positive experiences which accompany the satisfaction of desire. This is the pursuit of pleasure, following the pursuit of desires; maximising pleasure and minimising pain
• Eudaimonic approaches value behaving in a noble manner and developing your potential through the pursuit of meaning and recognises that whilst positive experiences may arise from this, it is not the pursuit of them which is of greatest importance. This is living a life of contemplation; living virtuously and in accordance with your authentic nature

Developing PERMA

The Authentic Happiness Theory

Martin Seligman then went on to create his authentic happiness theory which incorporated the historical hedonic and eudaimonic approaches as well as a third approach; engagement.

Pleasant Life

This relates to the experience of pleasure, rapture and positive feelings, and can be associated to the hedonic conceptualisation of wellbeing. An example would be any activity that leads to someone experiencing a positive emotion e.g. singing, eating and seeing friends.

Engaged Life

This is when you are being at one with what you are doing, losing a sense of consciousness and being fully absorbed. Examples are difficult as this is so individual. It is often doing something where you are challenged to the right degree and where you are using your strengths.

Meaningful Life

This relates to purpose and belonging. That is doing and being part of something bigger than just you. This could be a religion, place of worship, a political group, being green or being a member of your family or community.

The Wellbeing Theory

In more recent years, Martin Seligman revised his authentic happiness theory into the wellbeing theory and added 2 more aspects of life to his model.

Achieving Life

The pursuit of accomplishments, achievements and winning. An example might be people who takes part in a game or sport simply in order to win, which might be a momentary accomplishment, or people who do something which is about a longer term accomplishment such as building up a career in a specific area, i.e. the achieving life.

Positive Relationships

This recognises that we are social creatures and that good experiences can often come from being with others. For example, spending time with friends, getting on well with your boss at work or a kind gesture from a friend.

PERMA

PERMA stands for Positive emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment.

When put together these different lifestyles give us a map to highlight our strengths and give us the opportunity to work on our weaknesses. This theory isn’t trying to suggest that we need to exceed at all of these areas in order to be happy. Simply it is showing that we are individuals and have different needs, wishes and goals for our lives.

Also these aspects of life are typically mixed for each of us anyway. You will probably be able to relate to more than one and that’s not a bad thing. Some people are highly driven by one and others are driven by a more diverse range. Seligman suggests that if we get the right balance, for us, between these aspects of life that it will lead to us flourishing.

Things that promote well being and human flourishing:

• Positive emotions
• Engagement
• Positive relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishments

Introduction to Strengths

Introduction to Strengths and Flow

All too often we focus on our weaknesses, what we do that is unhelpful and the qualities in ourselves that we dislike. This topic seeks to get us to focus on our strengths, on the things that we do well and the qualities that are admired in us.

What are Strengths?

There is no universal definition of character strengths, though they are considered to be protective factors that support individual wellbeing. The definitions below can be applied in a broad range of contexts so they go some way towards explaining what strengths are:

Characteristics that allow a person to perform well or at their personal best.

– Wood et al (2011)

Ways of behaving, thinking or feelings that an individual has a natural capacity for, enjoys doing, and which allow the individual to achieve optimal functioning, whilst they pursue valued outcomes.

– Linley & Harrington (2006)

Why Strengths?

One of the first papers in the positive psychology literature suggests that the study of character strengths are central to the development of the field. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) stated that:

Our message is to remind our field that psychology is not just the study of pathology, weakness, and damage; it is also the study of strength and virtue. Treatment is not just fixing what is broken; it is nurturing what is best. Psychology is not just a branch of medicine concerned with illness or health; it is much larger. It is about work, education, insight, love, growth and play.

– Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi (2000)

Research about the value of strengths suggests that there are many benefits that can come from knowing and using our strengths in our daily life, including:

• Generating optimism and resilience.
• Improving relationships.
• Enhancing health and overall wellbeing.
• Developing confidence and self-esteem.
• Making you less sensitive to stress.
• Encouraging insight and perspective in your life.
• Creating a sense of happiness and fulfillment.

Aim

We hope by the end of this topic you will have:

1. Found a language for talking about strengths and the meaning of strengths and weaknesses.
2. Learnt about the strengths work in positive psychology research and how to recognise strengths in everyday actions.
3. Discovered your personal strengths and explored how to put them into practice.
4. Learnt about the concept of flow and how to notice the activities that put you into a flow state.

Consider More:

1. What do you think about the definitions of strengths above?
2. Which part of the topic are you most interested in?

Exploring Qualities and Characteristics

Exploring Qualities and Characteristics

It can be hard to start to consider the characteristics and qualities that we like in ourselves. However, it is often easier to think about the characteristics and qualities that we admire in other people.

Have a look at the images below and note down what characteristics and qualities come to mind when thinking about these people and animals. There is an example underneath them to help you.

If you’re struggling then think about someone in your life that you admire and note down what it is about them that you like.

Example

Curious. Playful. Cute. Brave. Friendly. Energetic. Loving. Intelligent.

Consider More:

1. Were you easily able to pick out some qualities based on the images above?
2. Did you notice yourself also considering the qualities you dislike about the images or the person you admire?

Strengths and Weaknesses

The quotes below are to get us thinking about comparing and contrasting strengths and weaknesses. As you read through them think about what they mean to you.

“We can conquer our weaknesses by building on our strengths.”

“Weaknesses are an essential ingredient for knowing yourself.”

“In time what once was a weakness can be turned into a strength”

“We would not be so complex and individual without strengths and weaknesses alike.”

When developing both strengths and weaknesses at the same time the research suggests there are not any benefits beyond solely focusing on strengths. However there were some participants in the study, particularly women, who found focusing on both strengths and weaknesses at the same time to be as effective as only focusing on strengths (Quinlan et al, 2012).

Whilst the positive psychology approach would recommend focusing on building strengths rather than ‘correcting’ weaknesses, being able to consider and acknowledge the broader spectrum of our abilities may result in a more integrated view of our human experience (Linley et al, 2006) and so it is important to consider when thinking about strengths.

Consider More:

1. Do you think knowing your weaknesses can be helpful?
2. Can you think of a time when you worked at turning a weakness into a strength?

Noticing Strengths

VIA Character Strengths

There are many ways to think about strengths and many words that can be used to describe the positive qualities we have. For the purposes of this course we will use the VIA character strengths. These are 24 strengths that have been chosen because they are different enough from each other. They are recognised across cultures, are morally valued and contribute to a sense of fulfillment. Each may be related to more than one characteristic or quality that we’ve looked at in the course so far. They are broken down into 6 virtues. These are then divided into a number of separate strengths, 24 in total. These are below.

1. Wisdom: Creativity, love of learning, perspective and curiosity.
2. Courage: Bravery, perseverance, zest and honesty.
3. Humanity: Social intelligence, love and kindness.
4. Justice: Fairness, teamwork and leadership.
5. Temperance: Self-regulation, humility, prudence and forgiveness.
6. Transcendence: Spirituality Gratitude Hope Humour Appreciation of beauty and excellence.

Positive psychology researchers are open to the fact that this classification is likely to change over time. They acknowledge that there are additional qualities that aren’t included and that there are other ways of thinking about and organising positive qualities and characteristics.

Noticing Strengths

Although we don’t often think about it, there are strengths hidden in the actions and reactions that we see on a day-to- day basis. Taking the time to explore noticing strengths in everyday actions is a helpful way to start to notice ourselves using our strengths. Equally by doing this we can see the strengths in others as well. This can help us to build positive relationships with others as we recognise positive qualities in them more often. This even extends to the strangers that you meet as you go about your day and sometimes sharing what you have noticed can be a way to ‘break the ice’.

Take a look at the activity below, it is about looking for strengths in everyday actions. There are 3 examples to get you started. Click + icon below to see the strengths that go with the statements.