Positive psychology is one of the more popular branches of psychology. This popular brand of psychology focuses on the positive events and influences in life. To boost your happiness in life, you can take advantage of the principles of positive psychology.
Positive psychology also focuses on growth by building on what’s positive. Considering that positive psychology is very important in your life, you may have to learn more about the principles of positive psychology to make it more understandable for you. Okay, let’s see the principles of positive psychology in our post below!
Introduction
It is known that psychology has become one of the social sciences in the humanities that has for many years discussed human behavior and attitudes towards events that occur in their environment. In the book entitled “Growth Psychology,” authored by Duane Schultz, a number of psychologists explain the importance of personal growth so that individuals can become fully human, influenced by the environment.
Albert Bandura, a psychologist, assumes that individual environmental experiences can form individual behavior in social cognitive theory and vice versa. However, he does not emphasize individual experience as having a meaning but rather as something that can form the personality of an individual.
Carl Rogers also stated that a fully functioning person is one who can see life as something full of surprises. Rogers emphasized that a mentally healthy person is someone who is able to adapt to their environment and has an optimistic view of the problems that occur in their life.
Another psychologist, Victor Frankl, also stated that each individual in this world carries out a special mission or task, so that the meaning of life that is obtained by individuals based on their mission will be different. However, he also argues that finding meaning in our lives is such a complicated thing to do.
According to Victor Frankl, not all individuals can quickly do it. It can even cause inner tension for some people. Thus, it does not mean that mental tension is bad. Instead, he argues that people who do not experience inner tension due to the difficulty of finding meaning in life are people who are less likely to experience what is called a nöogenic neurosis.
Frankl’s view of the whole human being actually reminds us of Maslow’s theory, i.e., the individuals who have found the meaning of life and function as a whole as mentally healthy human beings are humans who have actualized themselves. Recently, a new view has emerged that is arguably on the rise among psychological scientists, called “positive psychology.”
History and Concepts of Positive Psychology
According to some internet sources, this concept was first introduced by Martin Seligman in 1998. Other experts who support positive psychology are Christopher Peterson and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Seligman defines a happy life as having three paths to happiness, including a pleasant life, a good life, and a meaningful life. Here’s one for each explanation:
1) Pleasant life, or also known as the “life of enjoyment”, talks about how people optimally experience, forecast, and savor the positive feelings and emotions that are part of normal and healthy living, such as relationships, interests, hobbies, entertainment, etc. Seligman also stated that happiness is commonly obtained by people with middle-to upper economic ability.
2) Good Life can be defined as the happiness experienced when one focuses on personal strengths and relationships with others.
3) Meaningful Life is an ideal life, full of meaning and lessons to be learned. Seligman highlighted this concept of meaningful life. Moreover, meaningful life focuses on how individuals derive a positive sense of well-being, meaning, belonging, and purpose from being part of and contributing back to something larger and more permanent than themselves, such as nature, organizations, social groups, traditions, movements, belief systems.
Even though the focus of positive psychology is on happiness and life satisfaction, it does not mean that individuals are encouraged to get rid of negative thoughts and emotions that they feel. Basically, positive psychology really supports individuals to manage those negative thoughts and emotions as a way to develop themselves.
Positive Psychotherapy and Its Principles
In positive psychology, there is a therapeutic approach, i.e., Positive Psychotherapy (PPT), that is influenced by humanistic and psychodynamic approaches. The core focus of positive psychology is to move away from what is wrong or negative aspects of a person, and instead move towards what is good and positive.
Positive psychotherapy often utilizes a range of interdisciplinary approaches to psychotherapy, including the use of multicultural ideas, stories, and metaphors to help individuals form a new view of their mental health in positive ways.
Furthermore, therapists using Positive Psychotherapy frequently invite the individual to place themselves in their own life stories, so they become active in their healing process in a great way, leading them to become the therapist of their own recovery.
Here are the three core principles that need to be addressed to allow a positive outcome to happen:
1) The Principle of Hope
Basically, the principle of hope encourages individuals to focus on the overall positivism of mankind. Every negative experience is considered as having a higher purpose. Therefore, those experiences will be encouraged to be explored and reframed as a signal that there is an imbalance that needs to be addressed within the individual.
2) Principle of Balance
The principle of balance examines how people experience dissatisfaction and the method that they use to overcome it. That said, this dissatisfaction affects the way we think and feel. According to Positive Psychotherapy (PPT), negative symptoms actually arise when coping methods do not work, so that areas of our lives become unbalanced.
3) The principle of consultation
The principle of consultation sets that there are five stages of therapy which should be completed to overcome any problems arising in the two principles above in order to achieve positive results, here are they:
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- Observation: It applies where the individual provides an explanation of a problem, challenge or situation which upsets them and makes them happy.
- Inventory: It applies where the individual and therapist work together to explore and highlight correlations between negative feelings/symptoms and the individual’s actual abilities.
- Situational Support: It applies where the individuals are required to focus on their positive traits and those around them who significantly offer support to them.
- Verbalization: It applies where the individual is encouraged to verbally discuss and talk openly about negative feelings, challenges, or symptoms.
- Goal Development: It applies where individuals are invited to shift their focus to the future, set positive goals, and imagine positive feelings they would like to develop, as well as linking them to their unique strengths.
Controversy and Criticism
According to kampuspsikologi.com, positive psychology is a new perspective that continues to develop. However, it does not mean that positive psychology has also sparked controversy among experts. In his journal on the criticism of positive psychology, Held said that the view that “every negative thought and emotion must be viewed as an experience that allows humans to develop” can make individuals ignore reality.
In the article “The Problem with Positive Psychology” authored by Michaelson, he also criticizes positive psychology that does not touch on negative subconscious thoughts (unconscious negativity). Although negative experiences that are represented in the subconscious mind can come to the surface at any time when the individual has a strong emotional connection with the experience.
Moreover, the experts also underlined the importance of positive psychology in not ignoring individual differences, especially regarding the handling of post-traumatic stress disorder.
According to research that was conducted by Paul Meehl in 1973, every individual has a tendency to be vulnerable to trauma, but recently, research has also found that 70–75% of individuals who are frequently exposed to stress or experience traumatic events repeatedly have a high tendency to resilience.
Conclusion
Every time a person faces any problems, there will always be an effect. If the person has a strong intention to solve and manage the problem, of course it can be easily solved. Regardless of the controversy, positive psychology continues to contribute knowledge to the development of psychology, especially for therapeutic methods.
The point is, you cannot force yourself to think and be positive all the time, but you can have a positive impact on the environment through the things you do. Certainly, there is no need for big things. In this case, we just have to build confidence and believe that all our actions will have a real impact, either on ourselves or on our environment.
A bookworm and researcher especially related to law and citizenship education. I spend time every day in front of the internet and the campus library.
