Positive Psychology

 ‘Positive psychology teaches us that all of us are a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. No one has it all and no one lacks it all.’ Positive psychology aims to bring about the best in a person so that the person can live life to the fullest. Positive psychology helps individuals live a pleasant, engaged, meaningful or an achieving life. It helps to bring out a person’s strength. Everyone wants to be happy, but we wait for someone or something to make us happy. Happiness is a state of mind. If you look at the positive side of a thing, you win and you are happy. Every coin has two sides so does every situation. It depends upon us to choose which side we want to see. We must train our brain to filter our vision in every situation and only look at the positive side, because ‘micro changes in life can bring a macro transformation.’

Positive psychology focuses on the thriving of human beings when they are faced with adversity. Positive psychology was brought about in order to produce positive phenomena in an individual such as happiness, courage, love and forgiveness because they are much needed for the mental wellbeing of a person and are crucial while they overcome their adversities. Positive psychology helps one to unleash the inner moral excellence in oneself so that they can live a successful life.

We are quite familiar with the proverb, “every cloud has a silver lining”, we should be optimistic to go in search of the positive. Everybody serves us things unseparated; we must wisely pick the positive.

Positive psychology aids a lot to break the ‘state of unforgiveness’, a state when clients are unforgiving and as a result go through negative mental or physical consequences. The effectiveness of positive psychology lies within the extent to which positive psychology can turn negative emotions into positive emotions. It can help turn stressful situations into positive meaning. In doing so individuals are able to find meaning in negative events that will in turn lead to having greater positive emotions. Positive psychology is effective when in a negative situation we find something positive and are grateful for that.

Diseases can be cured by having a positive mindset. Your mindset is what matters in every situation. If you are calm in a negative and heated situation you win.

Emily Dickinson’s poem ‘There Is Another Sky’ is best known for the inspiration it radiates and the message of ‘never say die’. It emphasizes on the message that life is full of challenges and one can tackle the challenges with a positive attitude. The lines- 

“There is another sky,

Ever serene and fair,

And there is another sunshine,

Though it be darkness there.

Never mind faded forests, Austin,

Never mind silent fields –

Here is a little forest,

Whose leaf is ever green.”

unfurl the message that ups, and downs are part and parcel of life, and they are the ones that make life interesting. There is some ray of hope in every difficult situation, but one should have that attitude to find that ray of hope. We should have a positive approach towards life. No matter how much one is suffering, how much negativity is there in one’s life, if we have a positive attitude, with courage, we can change the situation.

Edmund Vance Cooke’s poem ‘How Did You Die?’ stresses on the mindset one has in a situation. It makes us understand that it doesn’t really matter whether you won or lost…what matters is your attitude, your mindset, the efforts you took while completing that task. We must remember that the opposite person won because we lost, we have a good share of credit to ourselves behind them winning and us losing. And if we have a positive attitude, one will agree that we either win or we learn, losing is never the option.

Another poem that lays significance on positive psychology is ‘Don’t Quit’ by Edgar Albert Guest. It reads –

“Success is failure turned inside out--

The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,

And you never can tell how close you are,

It may be near when it seems so far,

So, stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--

It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.”

Give it a thought…have you never felt like quitting? Have you never felt like giving up? Have you never given up on your dreams or at least thought of giving up on your dreams just because things didn’t turn out to occur as you wished them to? But giving up is never the solution, because while you are thinking of giving up there are many people training and working harder to defeat you, you are making their way easy by wasting your valuable time in these useless thoughts. You can turn a situation upside down by your positive mindset. Do try it once…