The Influence Of Positive Psychology On Personal Well-being
Let’s not confuse positive psychology with the need to be constantly happy, avoiding feelings of sadness and melancholy. In fact, positive psychology considers negative emotions to be crucial to learning and growing as a person. Therefore, when hearing this term, we should not relate it to a perfect world, or a world where “everything is rosy.”
Positive psychology was born from the need for change that Martin Seligman expressed when he saw that traditional psychology professionals focused exclusively on eliminating everything that causes us psychological discomfort. Seligman wanted to go one step further, seeking to eliminate the discomfort of negative feelings, but enhancing well-being by exercising happiness, self-esteem and optimism. According to him, he found the perfect combination to improve people’s quality of life.
At the moment, Positive psychology is defined as the scientific study whose ultimate objective is the development of positive attitudes to be able to live a full, fluid life and thus prevent mental health pathologies In other words, it studies how to promote the strengths and virtues of the human being’s character, such as joy, sense of humor, motivation, optimism, etc.
There is scientific evidence that supports the development of positive feelings with benefits in terms of the physical and mental health of individuals. Therefore, it can be said that positive psychology has a great weight on personal well-being. In today’s article, we will analyze this relationship in depth in order to understand the different opinions of experts on this topic.
As we have commented, Positive psychology focuses on using the strengths that each person has to increase their personal well-being It is based on the idea of highlighting what the person does have, what he is doing well. Perhaps many of us have felt that having a positive attitude in the face of unpleasant or unexpected situations helps increase cognitive, physical and social resources. Well, at the end of the day, this is the most important pillar of positive psychology: using pleasant emotions to be able to face situations that cause stress or discomfort in an autonomous and effective way.
Seligman, the father of this branch, wanted to break with the traditional psychological perspective and proposed focusing on positive emotions to help individuals be fully happy. However, we would like to clarify that this discipline does not represent a break with other psychological approaches, but rather provides an integrative and complementary perspective in educational, clinical and work settings.
Finally, it should be noted that positive psychology is based on the scientific method. That is to say, The models and exercises that are put on the table in this discipline have been validated and demonstrate their effectiveness in the population The results obtained are not due to chance or the placebo effect.
What is a fortress?
As much as we are talking about bringing out the positive side of each person to achieve an optimal state of mental health, let’s talk about the concept of strength that Seligman proposed. A strength is defined as a psychological characteristic that can be acquired throughout life and occurs in different situations of daily life
Perhaps strength can be confused with capacity. The first can be improved and requires your own will. For the second, there needs to be a basis to be able to improve them and it happens naturally and automatically. After clarifying the difference, let’s see what the 24 strengths that Seligman distinguished are, grouped into 6 virtues or categories:
What does personal well-being mean?
Definitely, The ultimate goal of positive psychology is to boost personal well-being and promote mental health In order to understand the meaning of personal well-being, we bring the Theory of Well-being proposed by Martin Seligman. The following elements are included in this theory:
The most notable thing about this theory is that it recognizes personal well-being with emotional, social psychological and spiritual aspects. It may remind you of the definition of mental health given by the World Health Organization (WHO): “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.”
Relationship between positive psychology and personal well-being
The results obtained from the studies carried out affirm that the development of personal well-being and happiness are positively related to the promotion of physical, mental and social health In addition, it helps prevent risk behaviors such as the abuse of tobacco, drugs, technologies, games, and in turn, reduces verbal and physical violence. Finally, this discipline has also proven to be effective in improving anxious and depressive symptoms.
Positive psychology is aware of the great diversity of human beings and that, therefore, there is no single way to be happy. In order to reach as many people as possible, this branch of psychology analyzes thousands of people and concludes what brings the most happiness to the population.
Thanks to research in this area, it has been discovered that one of the most important factors is optimism. Optimism is one of the strengths that provides greater well-being and is closely related to expectations for the future. Such is its influence on personal well-being that it has been discovered that those people with serious health problems who have an optimistic outlook have a longer life and report a better quality of life. In contrast, pessimistic people tend to have a shorter life, and maintain more unstable and less satisfactory interpersonal relationships.
Another topic of great interest within the study of positive psychology is the concept of flow Dr. Csikszentmihalyi is the author of this term and refers to the fact that people with the ability to flow feel clarity and tranquility and are not aware of the passage of time. They simply enjoy the moment, the activity, and are oblivious to the concerns of everyday life. Reaching this point requires significant self-knowledge and occurs when a balance is achieved between the level of difficulty of the task and the skills one has to solve it appropriately. If you do not have enough tools, the activity generates anxiety; and if it is too easy, it generates boredom or apathy.
In relation to personal well-being and positive psychology, resilience is an interesting concept that is worth analyzing. When a tragedy occurs, there are people who become obsessed with what happened and enter a depressive state, but there are others who are able to cope with the overwhelming pain of these situations. For this branch of psychology, humor and pleasant emotions are key factors for resilience In fact, there is research that shows that those people who use positive emotions in difficult moments in life never lose the ability to see that things can improve in the future. By working on these emotions, resilient people feel that negative feelings must be experienced, but above all, learn and draw strength from them.
Continuing research on the relationship between personal well-being and positive psychology can lead to the development of counseling and intervention programs that help lead a healthy lifestyle, both from a physical, psychological, social and spiritual point of view. We clarify this since in relation to health, prevention is extremely important and should not be left aside since the future of the population depends largely on it.
