Chapter 1

• “Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living”
(Peterson, 2008).

• Positive psychology is a scientific approach to studying human thoughts, feelings, and

behavior, with a focus on strengths instead of weaknesses, building the good in life
instead of repairing the bad, and taking the lives of average people up to “great” instead
of focusing solely on moving those who are struggling up to “normal” (Peterson, 2008).

What Positive Psychology Focuses on

 Positive psychology focuses on the positive events and influences in life, including:
 Positive experiences (like happiness, joy, inspiration, and love).
 Positive states and traits (like gratitude, resilience, and compassion).
 Positive institutions (applying positive principles within entire organizations and
institutions).
 Positive psychology spends much of its time thinking about topics like character
strengths
 Optimism
 Life satisfaction
 Happiness
 Well-being
 Gratitude
 Compassion (as well as self-compassion)
 Self-esteem
 Self-confidence
 Hope

Martin Seligman

Founder of positive psychology: Martin Seligman

• Seligman’s research in the 1960s and 70s laid the foundation for the well-known
psychological theory of “learned helplessness.” This theory, which has been supported by
 decades of research, explains how humans and animals can learn to become helpless and
feel they have lost control over what happens to them.

• Seligman connected this phenomenon with depression, noting that many people suffering
from depression feel helpless as well. His work on the subject provided inspiration, ideas,
and evidence to back up many treatments for depressive symptoms, as well as strategies
for preventing depression.

• Seligman grew frustrated with psychology’s overly narrow focus on the negative; so
much attention was paid to mental illness, abnormal psychology, trauma, suffering, and
pain, and relatively little attention was dedicated to happiness, well-being, strengths,
and flourishing.

Goals of Positive Psychology

 To positively impact the client’s life—this goal is above all others, and all others feed
indirectly into this goal. The main goal of coaching is to improve the client’s life.
Positive psychology coaching is no different;
 Increase the client’s experience of positive emotions;
 Help clients identify and develop their strengths and unique talents;
 Enhance the client’s goal-setting and goal-striving abilities;
 Build a sense of hope into the client’s perspective;
 Cultivate the client’s sense of happiness and well-being;
 Nurture a sense of gratitude in the client;
 Help the client build and maintain healthy, positive relationships with others;
 Encourage the client to maintain an optimistic outlook;
 Help the client learn to savor every positive moment (Mentor Coach, n.d.;
Peppercorn, 2014).

An Introduction to the PERMA Model

• The PERMA model is a widely recognized and influential model in positive

psychology. Seligman proposed this model to help explain and define well-being in
greater depth.
 • P – Positive Emotions: Even though seeking positive emotions alone is not a very
effective way to boost your well-being, experiencing positive emotion is still an
important factor. Part of well-being is enjoying yourself in the moment, i.e., experiencing
positive emotions;

• E – Engagement: Having a sense of engagement, in which we may lose track of time and
become completely absorbed in something we enjoy and excel at, is an important piece of
well-being. It’s hard to have a developed sense of well-being if you are not truly engaged
in anything you do;

• R – (Positive) Relationships: Humans are social creatures, and we rely on connections

with others to truly flourish. Having deep, meaningful relationships with others is vital to
our well-being;

• M – Meaning: Even someone who is deliriously happy most of the time may not have a
developed sense of well-being if they do not find meaning in their life. When we dedicate
ourselves to a cause or recognize something bigger than ourselves, we experience a sense
of meaning that there is simply no replacement for;

• A – Accomplishment / Achievement: We all thrive when we are succeeding, achieving

our goals, and bettering ourselves. Without a drive to accomplish and achieve, we are
missing one of the puzzle pieces of authentic well-being (Seligman, 2011).

Flow and Flourishing

• Understanding these concepts is vital for understanding the field of positive psychology. 

 Flourishing
 Flourishing is one of the most significant concepts in positive psychology, as it
encompasses and extends to so many other positive concepts.
 In short, “flourishing” refers to the state we are in when we pay attention to each aspect
of the PERMA model and build up a solid sense of well-being.
 We flourish when we cultivate our talents and strengths, develop deep and meaningful
relationships, feel pleasure and enjoyment, and make a meaningful contribution to the
world.
 We flourish when we find fulfillment in life along with achieving more traditional
objectives related to success when we are truly living the “good life” (Seligman, 2011).
 “Flourishing is the product of the pursuit and engagement of an authentic life that brings
inner joy and happiness through meeting goals, being connected with life passions, and
enjoying in accomplishments through the peaks and valleys of life.”
 flourishing is not a trait, a characteristic, or something you “either have or don’t have;”
rather, flourishing is a process that requires action.

 Flow

• The concept of flow was first scientifically explored and defined by Mihaly

Csikszentmihalyi (our second “founding father” of positive psychology). I

• n the last few decades of the 1900s, Csikszentmihalyi noticed that many artists fell into a
particular state while they were working; this state was characterized by a particularly
intense focus and great concentration on the task at hand, to the point of losing track of
time for hours at a time.

Characteristics of flow

 Intense and focused concentration on the present moment;

 The merging of action and awareness, or being fully present in your actions;
 A loss of reflective self-consciousness (lack of attention to the self);
 A sense of personal control or agency in the situation;
 A distorted sense of time passing;
 Experiencing the activity or situation as intrinsically rewarding.

(Csikszentmihalyi, 1975)
 Those who enter into a state of flow are totally immersed in what they’re doing. This
immersion arises when the challenges of the activity in front of us are significant and
roughly equal to our skill at this activity.
 When we have high skill and low challenge, we are bored. When we have a high
challenge and low skill, we are overwhelmed. When we have “low skill and low
challenge,” we are apathetic. It is only when both our skill and our challenges are
high that we enter into a flow state.
 flow also seems to link to greater happiness and well-being, more academic (and,
subsequently, career) success, and more positive and healthy relationships.

Living well at every stage of life

 “What works” across the life span.

 Childhood
 Youth
 Adulthood
 Older adulthood
 Resilience on childhood, positive youth development, living well as adult and
successful aging.

Resilience in childhood

 Naturally occurring personal and environmental resources that help the children and
adolescents to overcome life challenges.
 Resilience in positive psychology refers to the ability to cope with whatever life
throws at you. Some people are knocked down by challenges, but they return as a
stronger person more steadfast than before.
 A resilient person works through challenges by using personal resources, strengths,
and other positive capacities of psychological capital like hope, optimism, and self-
efficacy
 Case of Jackson
 “Bouncing back”
 A class of phenomenon characterized by patterns of positive adaptation in the context
of significant adversity or risk.
  Role of culture

Protective factors for psychosocial resilience in children

 Problem solving skills

 Self regulation skills for self control, attention and arousal
 Positive self perception-self efficacy
 Faith and sense of meaning in life
 Positive outlook of life
 Talents valued by self and society
 General appealingness and attractiveness to others

Role of family

 Attachment relationships
 Positive family climate with low discord between parents
 Organized home environment
 Education of parents
 Parents with the qualities (protective factors)
 Parent’s involved in the education of child

Role of community

 Effective schools
 Neighborhoods with high “collective efficacy”
 High levels of public safety
 Good emergency social services ( 1122, cyber harassment, rehabilitation)
 Good public health and health care availability

Strategies for promoting resilience in children

• Risk focused strategies: reducing risk and stressors

• Prevent or reduce likelihood of low birth weight and prematurity

• Screen for treat depression in mothers of newborns
• Prevent homeless episodes through housing policy or emergency assistance
• Reducing neighborhood crime or violence through community policing
• Ensure clean environment where children live or play

Asset focused strategies: improving number or quality of resources or social capital

• Provide food, water, shelter, medical or dental care

• Provide tutor, nurse, guardian
• Organize activity clubs for children or build a recreation center
• Educate parents about child development and effective parenting
• Restore community services after a disaster
• Train care providers, police and correction staff in child development
• Educate teachers about child development and effective teaching

Process focused strategies (power of human adaptation)

• Foster secure attachment between infant and parents through parental sensitivity
training and home visiting programs for new parents
• Nurture healthy brain development through high quality nutrition and early childhood
programs
• Encourage friendships of children with pro-social peers in healthy activities and co
curricular activities
• Support cultural traditions that provide children with adaptive rituals and
opportunities for bonds with pro-social adults, (religious education, ethnic traditions,
meditation)

Positive youth development (positive experiences+ Positive relationships+ positive

environment)

• Positive youth development: PYD is an intentional, pro social approach that engages
youth within their communities, schools, organizations, peer groups, and families in a
manner that is productive and constructive; recognizes, utilizes, and enhances young
people’s strengths; and promotes positive outcomes for young people by providing
opportunities, fostering positive relationships, and furnishing the support needed to
build on their leadership strengths.
• Recognizing the good in our youth and focus on each child’s strengths and potential.
• Youth interact with their environment and positive agents (youth and adults who
support healthy development, institutions to create climates conductive to growth,
programs that foster change).
• PYD generates physical and psychological competencies that serve to facilitate the
transition into adulthood characterized by striving for continued growth.
• Promoting social, cognitive, emotional, behavioral and moral competencies.
• Encouraging self determination
• Nurturing a positive identity
• Building beliefs in future
• Recognizing positive behavior
• Opportunities for pro-social development
• Living rich life (giving back to communities, high levels of wellbeing)

Positive youth development programs

• Structured and unstructured activities

• Organizations providing activities and positive relationships
• Socializing systems, promoting growth (day care centers, schools, libraries)
• The protective factors in a young person's environment —how these factors could
influence one's ability to overcome adversity, family support and monitoring; caring
adults; positive peer groups; strong sense of self, self-esteem, and future aspirations;
and engagement in school and community activities.

Adulthood

• Identity: People’s views, values and interests begin to become their own rather than a
reflection of their care giver’s beliefs.
• More likely to seek an interdependent, committed relationships with another person
and thereby achieve intimacy.
• Career consolidation: life task that requires the development of a social identity.
• Engagement with career, commitment.
• Ability to adjust in any kind of situations, loss of income, lack of new opportunities.
• Generativity: Giving away of self.
 • After achieving mastery in first three tasks, adult must possess the competence and
altruism to mentor the next generation.
• Social goals become more meaningful than achievement oriented goals.
• Keepers of meaning: person is willing to share their wisdom with others.
• Facilitate in development of younger people.
• Integrity: Bring peace to person’s life.
• Increased spirituality
• Sense of satisfaction in life

Successful aging.

• Positive aging, healthy aging, aging well

• Adding life to years (Robert Havighurst) three components
 Avoiding disease
 Engagement with life
 Maintaining high cognitive and physical functioning
• Maintaining a lifestyle that involves normal, valued and beneficial activities.

Focus of positive psychology

• Positive psychology is well on its way to identifying and sharing meaningful information
about how to live a better life.