Positive Psychology

Elitsa Tilkidzhieva,
psychotherapist and researcher
 On simplicity

“Truth is ever to
be found in the “Life is really
simplicity, and “Simplicity is the
simple, but we
not in the ultimate
insist on making sophistication.”
multiplicity and
confusion of it complicated.” - Leonardo da
things.” ― Confucius Vinci
― Isaac Newton
 What is it about?

 Happiness, well-being  Excitement

 Flourishing life  Hope
 Fulfilling relationships  Creativity
 Health  Virtue
 Love  Self-esteem
 Strength  Gratitude
 Joy  Meaning

“Positive psychology is the scientific study of positive human functioning

and flourishing on multiple levels that include the biological, personal,
relational, institutional, cultural, and global dimensions of life.”

- Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi

 “
“Happiness is the meaning and
purpose of life, the whole aim and the
end of human existence.”
-Aristotle
 In pursuit of happiness...

Abraham Maslow Karen Horney

(1908-1970) (1885-1952)

Martin Seligman Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Ellen Langer

(1942-) (1934-) (1947-)
 Transforming the way
we look at the world

“The soul grows by

subtraction, not
addition.”
– Henry David Thoreau

“In the pursuit of knowledge: everyday something

is added.
In the pursuit of enlightenment: everyday
something is dropped.”
- Lao Tzu
The David of Michelangelo (1501-1504)
The quest

Identifying the right questions

 No right answers,
but right questions

How can we help ourselves and others (individuals,

communities, societies) become happier?
Am I happy?
How do I become happy?
○ Happiness is not a binary:
Do I have self-esteem?
Is my relationship good?

How do I become happier?

How can I increase my self-esteem?
How can I improve my relationship?
○ Hapiness is a process:
How can I improve?
How can I get better?
How can I live a more fulfilling life?
 “
“What is most personal, is most general.”
- Carl Rogers

Study research, study others, but most of all - yourself

The importance of positive
psychology
 A fresh perspective

Who are the happy people?

Does happiness favor those of a particular age, sex, or income level?

Does wealth enhance well-being?

Does happiness come with having certain traits?

A particular job, satisfying close relationships, an active faith?

What attitudes, activities, and priorities engender a sense of well-

being?

(Myers & Diener, 1995)

 Negative vs. Positive research
(21:1)

5 119 402
Anger Joy

38 459 1 710
Anxiety Happiness

48 366 2 357
Depression Life satisfaction

David Myers (1997). Psychological Abstracts 1967-1995

 “
“The science of psychology has been far more successful on the
negative than on the positive side. It has revealed to us much about
man’s shortcomings, his illnesses, his sins, but little about his
potentialities, his virtues, his achievable aspirations, or his
psychological height. It is as if psychology had voluntarily
restricted itself to only half its rightful jurisdiction, and that the
darker meaner half.” - Abraham Maslow
 The role

“The message of the Positive Psychology movement is to remind our

field that it has been deformed. Psychology is not just the study of
disease, weakness, and damage; it also is the study of strength and
virtue. Treatment is not just fixing what is wrong; it also is building
what is right. Psychology is not just about illness or health; it is about
work, education, insight, love, growth, and play. And in this quest for
what is best, Positive Psychology does not rely on wishful thinking,
self-deception or hand-waving; instead it tries to adapt what is best in
the scientific method to the unique problems that human behavior
presents in all its complexity.” - Martin Seligman
 The aim

“The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyse a change in

psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst
things in life to also building the best qualities in life.”
- Martin Seligman

It’s about life flourishing, it’s about flourishing individual, it’s about the
flourishing community and about a flourishing society.
Downward spiral
Negative research reflects reality
 The reality is getting worse

○ First onset: phobias (7-14), impulse control (7-15), mood disorders (under
25), substance disorders (under 20), half of all lifetime mental disorders start by
the mid‐teens and three‐fourths by the mid‐20s (Kessler at al., 2007)

○ Depression at Harvard – 80% of Harvard students according to the Crimson

study (2004) were depressed, rising levels of anxiety and other mental illnesses
on campus.

○ In a study of 13 500 students throughout USA, nearly 45% were seriously

depressed to the point of not being able to function over the last year. Over 94%
feel overwhelmed or stressed. (Kadison, 2005)

Look at these numbers! Not just feeling ups and downs!

What are you talking about positive psychology?
 Affecting reality

Negative research Positive research

Negative experiences Positive experiences

The question makes a difference: Are you depressed today? vs. What are you so happy about?
 Perspectives

Disease model Health Model

get rid of disease get people flourish

Focus on weakness Focus on strength

(what I’m bad at, what’s the problem) (what am I good at, what functions well)

Overcoming deficiencies Building competences

Avoiding pain Pain as a stepping stone

(run away from pain) (accept it, learn from it and stive forward)

Pursuing happiness
Running away from unhappiness
(happier life, excitement, pleasure, joy, a
(let’s get to zero, so that I am not ill)
lifelong journey)

Neutral state – zero Getting more, wanting to get more out of

(not feeling too bad) life (excitement, joy, pleasure)
 Happiness is not just
negation of unhappiness

It’s not enough to get rid of the illness in order to be happy!

psychosis, neurosis, annoyance, wellbeing,

depression, boredom, satisfaction, joy,
anxety, anger, etc. quiet desperation, excitement,
comfortable happiness, etc.
numbness, etc.
Which reality do you chose?

The choice has implications…

 The choice

o The importance of negative experiences

o What do we do with them?
o Do we stuff them somewhere? Close our eyes? Pretend they don’t
exist?
o Do we get defeated by them? Resignate? And spend in our days in
comfortable numbness?

o Or accept them, learn from them and grow with them.

Because I want more out of my life. I want to feel excited about my work, I
want to feel passionate about my relationships, I want to walk out and feel
gratitude, to be excited. I want more.
 Prevention

“In the last decade, psychologists have become concerned with prevention. How can we prevent
problems like depression or substance abuse, or schizophrenia in young people, who are
genetically vulnerable or who live in a world that nurture these problems. How can we prevent
murders, school yard violence in children, who have access to weapons, poor parental supervision
and the mean streak. What we have learned for over 50 years is that the disease model does not
move us closer to the prevention of these serious problems. Indeed the major strives in prevention
have largely come from a perspective focused on systematically building competences, not
correcting weakness. We have discovered that there are human strengths that act as buffers
against mental illness: courage, future-mindedness, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work
ethic, hope, honesty, perseverance, the capacity for flow and insight, to name several... We have
shown that learning optimism prevents depression and anxiety in children and adults, roughly
halving their incidence over the next two years... Similarly, I believe, that if we wish to prevent drug
abuse in teenagers who grow up in a neighborhood that puts them at risk, that the effective
prevention is not remedial. Rather it consists of identifying and amplifying the strengths that
these teens already have.” - Martin Seligman
Fascinating research
Different questions, different answers
 At-risk population/Resilience

Why do these individuals fail? Why do so many people from inner cities not
finish high schools, are on drugs, why do so many of them then become
dependent on the government, why so much crime at these areas?

 poverty, the lack of resources, child abuse, broken families, poor education, etc.

What makes some individuals succeed despite all these circumstances?

 Must be superkids – no, normal kids with ordinarily characteristics, but

extraordinary results
 Social support, cultivating optimism and self-esteem, faith and sense of
meaning, prosocial behaviour, focus on their strengths, set goals, have a role
model
Creating reality
The power of beliefs and expectations
 Pygmalion Effect

○ Teachers’ beliefs that students are right before a major cognitive leap –
performance increased, IQ increased (Rosenthal& Jacobson, 1992)
○ Work environment – workers became more committed and involved, less
absent, became the best workers because the boss communicated more
belief in them (Murphy et al., 2006)

And it works both ways! Can you imagine the implication of this
knowledge? In relationships, as a parent, as a child,
as a therapist…

Beliefs are self-fulfilling profecies;

our expectations become reality of other people
 “
“Treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is.
Treat a man as he can and should be and he
shall become as he can and should be.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
 The power of the situation
o Milgram’s Experiment (Yale,
1963) – obedience to authority:
65% (two-thirds) of participants
continued to the highest level of
450 volts. All the participants
continued to 300 volts.
o Zimbardo’s prison experiment
(Stanford, 1971) – within few
hours adopted the roles fully
(harassment, brutality, sadism),
had to be stopped after a week
o Bargh (1999) – primed elderly
words to study the power of
stereotypes: worse memory, and
performance, actually walked
slower and more hunched down
○ Langer‘s reversing aging experiment
(1979) – mental and biological age decreased!
within a week the length of the fingers
extended, became more flexible, their
hearing and sight improved significantly,
their memory increased, muscle strength
increased, judged, to be significantly younger
○ Langer’s flight simulator study (1989) –
in 40% of the subjects the eye sight improved
significantly! Just because they were put in a
positive situation.
○ Bargh primed achievement (2001) –
words like thriving, success, persistence and
hard work, motivation. Those who were
primed, did better on the tests, their memory
improved, they persisted longer in trying to
solve these problems.
 The importance of
environment

Everything matters:
what we do, what we write, what we read, what we think about, how we
think about ourselves and others, what we eat, how we spend our time,
how we live, what we believe in

The way we create our lives influences our health, moods, perceptions
and behaviour.

Do you pay attention to your environment? Do you have positive things

around you? Things that motivate you? People you love, places that you
enjoy, things that excite you? Are you writing the script of your life?
 “
“People who regard themselves as highly efficacious act,
think, and feel differently from those who perceive themselves
as inefficacious.
They produce their own future, rather than simply foretell it.”
- Albert Bandura
Happiness is a choice
“Happiness depends upon ourselves”
–Aristotle
 Cruicial for a happier life

○ Allow yourself to experience the whole range of human emotions (both

positive and negative), accept them and grow with them

○ Have the right expectations of what will make you happy (external vs. internal)

○ Give yourself the permission to be happy – free from guilt

○ Spend with our family, friends, people we care about and who care about you.
Quality time (off cell phones, emails, tv - really being together, time affluence)

○ Exercise - physical exercise (3 x 40 min/week) predicts happiness

○ Cultivate the habit of gratitude, appreciate (gratitude diary – happier, physically

healthier, more generous, optimistic and successful)

○ Simplify your life, your work, your tasks – less is more. Strive for quality, not for
quantity.

○ Do meaningful and pleasurable things

○ Recreate – we need the recovery time in order to be creative, productive and happy
 “
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Ghandi
 Practical Excersice

Generate as many endings as you can think of to the sentences (5 or more):

□ If I bring more awareness to my life…

□ The things that make me happy are…
□ To bring more happiness to my life…
□ If I take more responsibility for fulfilling my wants…
□ If I bring more integrity to my life…
□ If I were willing to say yes, when I want to say yes, and no when I want
to say no…
□ If I breathe deeply and allow myself to experience what happiness feel
like…
□ I am becoming aware…
 Bibliography and Recomendations

○Antonovsky, A. (1979). Health, Stress and Coping. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
○Ben-Shahar, T. (2008). Happier: Can you learn to be happy? Berkshire:McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.
○Ben-Shahar, T. Unpublished lectures on Positive Psychology. Harvard University.
○Kessler, R., et al. (2007). Age of onset of mental disorders: A review of recent literature. Psychiatry.20(4):
pp. 359–364.
○Maslow, A. (1962). Toward a Psychology of Being. John Wiley & Sons
○Masten, A. S., Reed, M. J. (2002). Resilience in development. In C. R. Snyder and S. J. Lopez (Eds.),
Handbook of Positive Psychology, pp. 528-540. Oxford University Press.
○Murphy, D., Campbell, C., Thomas N. G.(2006). The Pygmalion effect reconsidered: its implications for
education, training and workplace learning. Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 23 Iss: 4/5, pp.238 –
251.
○Myers, D. G., Diener, E. (1995). Who is happy? Psychological Science, 6, 10-19. (reprinted in Annual Editions:
Social Psychology 97/98; digested in Frontier Issues in Economic Thought: Vol. 3, Human Well-Being and
Economic Goals, N. Goodwin, Ed.).
○Rosenthal, R., Jacobson, L. (1992). Pygmalion in the classroom. Expanded edition. New York: Irvington.
○Seligman, M., Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). Positive Psychology: An Introduction. American Psychologist. 55
(1): pp. 5–14.
○Sheldon, K. M. & King, L (2001). Why Positive Psychology Is Necessary. American Psychologist, 56, 216-217.
○Snyder, C. R. & Lopez, S. J. (Eds.) (2002). Handbook of Positive Psychology, pp. 528-540. Oxford University
Press.
○Werner, E. & Smith, R. (2001). Journeys from Childhood to Midlife: Risk, Resilience and Recovery. Cornell
University Press.