Accentuating the positive

Living the fullest life we can, and preparing our children and young people to do the same, is a challenge for us all. The popular new discipline of positive psychology shows us how.

Positive psychology was pioneered in the United States 15 years ago by academics such as Professor Martin Seligman and the late Professor Chris Peterson. It has since exploded in popularity globally, and here in Australia the University of Melbourne’s Graduate School of Education has embraced its potential.

With a Centre for Positive Psychology and a Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) launched earlier this year, the Graduate School has invested heavily in the discipline. Part of the reason for this, explains MAPP Director Associate Professor Dianne Vella-Brodrick, is the recognition of how important positive psychology is to the education sector.

“Young people have shown they connect really well with positive psychology because it provides a refreshing and different perspective to learning about mental health,” she says.

“Often young people who are not feeling very well are reticent to seek professional help and so to deliver positive psychology within a more general context, to everybody within a school system, enables more accessibility and normalises discussions about mental health issues.

“Research has found that positive psychology programs can boost desirable outcomes such as hope, gratitude, life satisfaction and resilience in young people. Bringing the positive aspects of life to the fore can make a huge difference,” Associate Professor Vella-Brodrick says.

“Very often when young people are feeling anxious, depressed or stressed they become preoccupied with negative thoughts, so getting them to think about what they can be grateful for in their lives is really important. It shifts their mindset from being caught up in this negativity to a focus on what is positive in their lives.

“In addition, we need to keep in mind that negative events are prone to what we call negativity bias – which is where we tend to give negative events more attention than positive events. To counter this negativity bias we need deliberate strategies.”

Such strategies might include expressing gratitude to others, committing random acts of kindness and generally being kind, savouring everyday life, using your signature strengths for the greater good and writing down three good things that happened during the day before you go to bed. These types of activities can help everyone, not just those at risk of mental illness, Associate Professor Vella-Brodrick says.

“Positive psychology has the benefit of being able to help a full range of people, from those who are depressed to those who are OK,” she says. “For those who are OK, it will enable them to prosper and make the most of their lives. And when we are feeling quite well ourselves it enables us to be in a position to help others, to be more civic minded and to engage in activities that will benefit the community more broadly.”

Research in the field also shows that living a full life requires a variety of different pathways to happiness. Joyful, hedonic happiness is part of the picture, but engagement, connection and meaning are important too.

“We all need to know why we wake up in the morning,” says Dr Vella-Brodrick. “Everyone, including our children and young people, needs goals to work towards to help us feel valuable and to give us purpose.”

Professor Seligman is Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology and Director of the Penn Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He is in Australia for the Fourth Positive Psychology and Wellbeing Conference. Look for a lecture extract in March Voice.

Professor Martin Seligman will give a public lecture for the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the Melbourne Town Hall on Friday 7 February at 6.30pm. Tickets: $65

www.education.unimelb.edu.au/positivepsychology2014/public_lecture