Until not so long ago, it was assumed that psychology was a scientific field aimed at correcting what is wrong. Thus, it was practically an extension of health disciplines, especially psychiatry and neurology, and strategies for “correcting” children’s behavior.
However, the development of this discipline was showing that That conception of psychology seen as “fixing what is broken” was extremely limited (and generator of stigma). Why settle for using what we are learning about the human mind only to help those who consider themselves in a bad situation compared to other people? Why can’t we use that knowledge to not only lose less, but to win more?
Positive Psychology has its reason for being in these two questions, and aims to help us change to get closer to the way we would like to be to promote the most ambitious personal or professional projects of our lives. In this article we will see what its benefits are and how it contributes to personal development.
Positive Psychology is based on the philosophical current of humanism, which points out that subjective experiences, what we feel and that we cannot express in words, can have as much or more value than our observable behavior. Therefore, psychologists who work from this paradigm seek to achieve effects that go beyond the objective, and that connects with the motivations and true needs and concerns of people.
Let’s see a brief summary about the benefits of Positive Psychology and the way in which it brings us closer to these kinds of goals related to the emotional and what is truly meaningful for our lives.
1. It makes us improve in the regulation of emotions
From Positive Psychology it is understood that what we feel is not directly the result of what happens around us, but rather how we interpret and perceive what happens around us. That is why it is important to know how to manage our emotions, given that On many occasions, inadequate regulation of these makes us see problems where there are none.
Anger, for example, is capable of making us sacrifice many things in order to do something that not only does not bring us any benefit, but also harms us more than we were when we began to feel that way.
With this objective, psychologists who start from the paradigm of Positive Psychology They train people to be able to adjust their emotions in the best possible way and make these work in your favor, and not against you. Ultimately, if our emotional side exists it is because most of the time it is useful to us to a greater or lesser extent, although there are always cases in which this is not the case and it is worth learning to minimize its harmful effects.
It is not about suppressing them, but about ensuring that some emotional states do not eclipse the influence of others that should have a modulating role on the former.
Self-concept is the set of beliefs about oneself that constitutes everything we know about who we are. Depending on how it is, we will feel more or less capable of performing certain tasks or to be well integrated into a certain social circle.
Positive Psychology helps us to have a self-concept that adjusts to our real abilities and qualities and our ability to improve in certain tasks, and this translates into good self-esteem.
It does this by putting our apparent failures into perspective and showing us the way in which a good part of its existence is due to elements in our environment that we could not control, but that we can choose how they affect us.
3. Gives guidelines to start projects and transform habits
Starting a new project requires leaving our comfort zone. That is, assuming a certain degree of discomfort that will come at the beginning, but that over time will fade as we see the fruits of our efforts (fruits that we would not have achieved if we had not made an effort to get out of the routine. ).
Thus, Positive Psychology immerses us in dynamics that force us to put ourselves in control of our lives and not letting limiting beliefs restrict our true freedom.
4. It allows us to develop leadership
Not everyone can be a leader 24 hours a day, but we all have the ability to lead groups in certain contexts and types of work.
Since Positive Psychology not only focuses on the individual but also takes into account the social element of psychology gives us the tools to adopt a leadership style that works well for us in a certain facet of our lives, whether personally or professionally.
5. Invites us to develop our own philosophy of life
As we have seen so far, the benefits of Positive Psychology have to do with the empowerment of people: allowing them to be people who make important decisions and know how to assume their consequences in the most constructive way possible.
Therefore, an effect derived from all this is that thanks to these dynamics we are generating our own philosophy of life, a chain of principles and values that allows us to make sense of what we experience instead of limiting ourselves to following the ideas of others who have never been in our situation.
