Positive Psychology

Just like everything else, psychology can be seen, pursued, and applied both in positive and negative ways. Traditional clinical psychology and psychotherapy is the practice of making miserable people less miserable; of finding what's wrong with you and trying to fix it. Positive psychology, on the other hand, is the application of this science to improvement in quality of life for healthy people, and finding and nurturing high talent and genius. It's making happy people happier, and helping them reach their potential. In referring to "happiness," since this is such a fuzzy term, it has been divided into three categories: the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life.

In essence, people who lead the pleasant life are those who experience the most extreme amounts positive sensation and emotion, but it is short-lived. They devote their efforts to fun and pleasure for themselves. Overall, however, they do not feel much satisfaction. Those who live the good life are aware of what their strengths are and seek activities that fit with their abilities and interests. They tend to feel generally satisfied with life. Finally, people who live the meaningful life are aware of their strengths and interests and use these to serve a purpose that is larger than themselves. They feel the most satisfaction of all three groups. Most people do not live lives that are completely in one category; they do activities from all three.

I, for example, spend the majority of my time trying to do, or at least think about, meaningful things because I have a deep sense of purpose and duty. I know exactly what I want to accomplish (even if I don't have a clear idea of how I'm going to). As you can probably tell, simply by the fact that I created this website, I'm completely obsessed with this purpose. Apparently, though this came as a surprise to me when I discovered it, this is not very common. It really hadn't occurred to me that most people aren't idealists and don't have a strong vision for the future, and that disturbed me. However, I also spend a lot of time with good, creative pursuits that I don't necessarily consider to be of great importance (especially when I am in situations where it is difficult to do more meaningful activities). And that's where all the huge amounts of flippantly humorous, ridiculous, meaningless, and often absurd artwork that I've created came from. Creating them, for me, was part of a good, fulfilling life (purely since the act of creating is fulfilling); and possibly, though it's debatable, promotes a pleasurable life for others.

I must admit, however, that I myself don't really have a very pleasurable life. There have been times when I was having more fun than others, and I feel that it's important to have a good amount of pleasure in life; but overall I've been too busy thinking about or doing creative or meaningful things that I just didn't bother having fun purely for the sake of fun. In other words, even though I try to enjoy and have fun with whatever I'm doing, usually what I'm doing has a deeper purpose than pure enjoyment. For example, at this time in my life, since I am physically unable to do much (I'm recovering from surgery and the surgery-inducing condition), I have a lot of free time to watch movies. I don't watch them for enjoyment; I watch to learn from them (since I want to be a filmmaker), and most of them have strong morals, ideals and values. And yes, I actually kind of consider this to be a fault in myself. (Incredible, I know.)

Links to External Resources:

• TED Video -- Martin Seligman on What Positive Psychology Can Help You Become
• Book on Using Films to Build Virtues and Character Strengths
• Site with tests to determine authentic happiness

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