I am a woman obsessed. Ever since I found out about positive
psychology, I simply can't stop reading about it, thinking about it
and talking about it to everyone who'll listen (and those who
won't)! Yes, you might think I am a geek, and you're probably
right. You might, however, not know that I studied psychology for
five years and seriously considered becoming a clinical
psychologist. One of the key reasons I decided against it was that
I thought that dealing with problems, pathologies and dysfunction
all day long would spill over into the rest of my life. And those
of you who've had much to do with psychologists and psychiatrists
will probably agree that - with some notable exceptions - this is
very much the case.
I love psychology and I find human behaviour fascinating, but I
found the focus on maladaptive and dysfunctional behaviours and the
emphasis on 'fixing' problematic. In the nineties, when I was doing
my Masters, I was frustrated by how very little focus was given to
what makes adults and children resilient in the face of adversity.
I nearly did a PhD on that very topic. So imagine my delight to
find out about a new branch of psychology that focuses on the
positive!
What is positive psychology?
Positive psychology is the scientific study of the good and
fulfilled life. Positive psychologists scientifically study
positive emotions, positive personality traits and positive
institutions. Basically, they study what makes life worth living.
Articles and books in this field cover topics such as happiness,
optimism, wisdom, courage, humanity and humour to name but a
few.
What makes that so special, I hear you ask? Until relatively
recently, these positive aspects of life were all but overlooked by
traditional psychology which largely focused on how people survive
and endure adversity, mental illness and bad childhoods. There has
been relatively little research on how people can flourish to their
full potential.
It's true that bookshop shelves are covered with 'self-help'
books promising that you'll be able to lose weight, win friends,
influence people, make huge amounts of money, and find the love of
your life simply by wishing it. However, the great majority of
those books don't have robust, scientific studies to back up their
claims. Positive Psychology does.
A brief history
To really understand the origins of Positive Psychology, I went
investigating. One of the most useful sources I found was the
millennial issue of the American Psychologist devoted to positive
psychology. In the introduction, Martin Seligman and Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi outlined some of the history and background of
modern psychology, explaining how its focus on pathology
evolved.
Before the Second World War, the emerging science of psychology
had three distinct missions, namely to:
- Cure mental illness
- Make people's lives more productive and fulfilling
- Identify and nurture high talent
Things changed after the war, and, from what I've read, the
explanation is quite simple: as you'd expect, the emphasis shifted
to where the money was. The post-war establishment of the Veteran's
Administration and its funding of mental illness treatment saw
psychologists exclusively focus on the first mission of curing
mental illness to the exclusion of the other two.
This focus was further aided by the founding of the National
Institute of Mental Health in 1947. The Institute was based on the
disease model of pathology - in other words, looking at what was
wrong with people and how to fix it. As a consequence, according to
Seligman, academics found that they could get grants if their
research was about pathology.
So if you ever thought that psychology was overly preoccupied
with what ails people, with pathology weakness and with damage, you
were right!
What is Revolutionary about Positive Psychology?
That people want to make their lives better and that they want
to be happier isn't new. Yet it is a well-documented phenomenon
that as countries and individuals in the West have grown wealthier,
they have also become unhappier. In the US, there is talk of a
'depression epidemic'. In New Zealand, according to a recent global
study, one in six have thought of suicide, and
depression is identified as the strongest risk factor.
The reality that in the West we've become unhappier as we have
grown wealthier in absolute terms, has no doubt fuelled the growth
of the self-help industry and its self-proclaimed happiness gurus.
What is revolutionary about Positive Psychology is that it is a
science. This field applies the same long-term
quantitative and qualitative research methodologies used in
medicine and psychiatry to the new study of what makes life better
and how we as individuals can make ourselves happier and more
fulfilled. Positive Psychologists study and compare various
approaches to identify what really works and what doesn't!
Perhaps it is telling that the website Quackwatch, a
nonprofit corporation whose purpose is to combat health-related
frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct, lists nothing for
'positive psychology' or Martin Seligman.
Signature Strengths
There's a lot I could write about positive psychology. But I
decided that the most important and relevant thing for
Professionelle readers would be Seligman's work on signature
strengths.
Classification of mental disorders in a way that is respected
and upheld all over the world is the backbone of psychology and
psychiatry. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association,
is the handbook for mental health professionals. It lists different
categories of mental disorders and the criteria for diagnosing
them. The DSM is used worldwide by clinicians and researchers as
well as insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and policy
makers. It's the bible on 'What's Wrong with People'.
Martin Seligman, who is widely regarded as one of the founding
fathers and the leading spokesman of Positive Psychology, figured
out that without a similar, agreed way to classify the 'sanities',
Positive Psychology would run the huge risk of using subjective,
culturally specific and unreliable measures. So, Seligman and Co
enlisted Christopher Peterson, the director of the clinical
psychology programme at the University of Michigan to oversee
the creation of an authoritative classification and measurement
system of human strengths.
Strengths are different from talents. Talents are highly
heritable and are quite fixed in the sense that you are either
talented in something - like music - or you're not. Even with the
best teachers, if you have no or little musical talent, you'd be at
best average. You can, however, choose to nurture your talent: if
you have musical talent, and have the best teachers, and if you
work very hard, the chances are your talent will be greatly
enhanced. But you can't choose to possess musical talent!
Strengths are different. Possessing strengths involves choices;
you choose whether you want to develop them and keep building and
using them. Strengths, as Seligman, Peterson et al define them, are
things that we can keep building and proactively enhancing
throughout our lives. And much of our happiness and fulfillment
depends on our doing so, but more on this later.
To undertake this mammoth task of classifying and measuring
strengths, Peterson's group began by searching for virtues that are
ubiquitous across the most globally representative cultures.
Drawing on the writings of Aristotle, Plato, the Old Testament, the
Talmud, Buddha and Confucius to name but a few, they found that
almost every single one of these traditions endorses six core
virtues:
- Wisdom and knowledge
- Courage
- Love and humanity
- Justice
- Temperance
- Spirituality and transcendence
Being psychologists, however, this was not enough! Their task
developed into translating these six virtues into something that
could be clearly defined, measured, evaluated and studied.
Enter: signature strengths
Seligman, Peterson et al developed twenty-four signature
strengths that can be measured. These strengths underlie the six
character virtues. The way to acquire each virtue is through
developing the signature strengths behind it.
To find out what your signature strengths are, visit the Authentic Happiness website to register and
take the VIA test.
Much has been written about Positive Psychology, but what's
stuck with me and what I've been practising since I started delving
into this field is finding ways to use my signature strengths every
day and in everything I do. As an insecure over-achiever working
for high pressure organisations, I spent half a life time focusing
on my areas for development. The positive psychology approach of
identifying and focusing on my strengths, further developing them
and finding ways to use them more in my life, my whole life, has
all but revolutionized how I operate and yes, how I feel.
Many professional women I know are consumed with what they are
not good at and how they should work on their 'weaknesses' or, in
management speak, their 'areas for development'. Give yourself a
break for a week, go on the website to find out your signature
strengths and for a week try consciously to use one of your
strengths in an area you wouldn't normally use it. Long term
studies have found this simple little intervention sustainably
increases happiness and decreases depressive symptoms.
The work-fulfilment nexus - Signature Strengths, being
appreciated and values alignment
Being able to use your signature strengths at work is quite
obviously a must have for personal fulfilment and job satisfaction.
If you don't get to use your signature strengths at work, chances
are you will feel like you aren't able to perform at your best.
Thus, reflecting on whether your job allows you to use your
signature strengths will provide you with great insight into your
career and personal well-being.
However, I don't think it's enough. Looking back on my own
career, those of my family and friends as well as people I have
coached and mentored, it dawned on me that using one's signature
strengths at work isn't enough. We also need to feel valued and
respected for possessing and using these strengths.
Imagine the following scenario. Three of your top five signature
strengths are social intelligence, integrity and humor. You're in a
professional services industry, you work with clients which lets
you use your strengths every day in your interaction with them.
However, the firm you work with doesn't value those strengths. Your
clients might, but your bosses don't. How satisfied do you think
you'll be?
To be valued by your employers, you need to pick the
organisation with the right culture for you. That right culture
will be a workplace whose values align with your own values. If
your core values are meaningful relationships based on integrity
and honesty and you work for an organisation that values 'making a
quick buck', the chances are that they are not going to appreciate
your signature strengths of integrity and social intelligence.
I firmly believe that our values are closely tied to our
signature strengths. We are likely to value the things we choose to
develop and enhance in ourselves. People who are satisfied and who
prosper at work and in their private lives are likely to have these
three things in full alignment:
- They work in organisations with similar values to those they
personally hold (and I mean the REAL values, not those on nice
posters on the reception wall)
- They get to use their signature strengths at work frequently
and are
- Valued by their workplace for those strengths.
Words of Caution
Positive Psychology is a science, not some 'self-help'
guru-driven field. The claims it makes are based on scientific
research and large scale studies rather than on emotionally
compelling, individual anecdotes. Being a science also means that
there is some valid criticism of the field as well.
The first and most obvious criticism is that none of this is
actually new. And a lot of it is just 'common sense'. Indeed, this
may be the case at first glance. However, happiness hasn't been
properly researched over the last century. If focusing on one's
strengths is simply 'common sense', then why is it that most
performance discussions are focused on 'areas for further
development'? As is often the case, it turns out the 'common sense'
isn't so common after all.
Indeed, a study at a Brazilian workplace conducted by Barbara
Fredrickson from the University of North Carolina and Marcial
Losada, showed that the most effective teams were the ones who had
the most positive meetings. Effectiveness was measured using
customer satisfaction, profitability and internal reviews. What
they found was that the minimum ratio for successful functioning
was three positive comments to one negative one in meetings!
One major criticism of the field is that positive psychology has
a prescriptive nature. Some have gone as far as to call it a
'religion'. Another criticism is that many of the claims made are
made without long-term evidence about its usefulness and lack of
causing harm. Finally, it is also acknowledged by some Positive
Psychologists that increasing happiness levels will potentially
diminish creative outputs.
I believe it is important to be aware of these criticisms and
make one's own judgment. Personally, I have learned a huge amount
over the last few months while researching this field, and some of
those learnings have literally transformed my life.
So, how happy should we be?
I believe the answer depends on what's important for you. If you
value success and achievement, chances are some unhappiness is
quite a powerful driver.
In
the World Values Survey, carried out with nearly 120,000 people
from 96 countries by Dr Ed Diener from the University of Illinois,
it was found that those who were moderately happy (rating their
life satisfaction as a eight or nine out of ten) made more money
than those who scored ten. But those who scored nine and ten were
more likely to have stable, intimate relationships.
Dr Weiner did hypothesize that perhaps extremely happy people
might be more satisfied with their lives and thus less likely to
strive for higher rewards. Everyone agrees that being happy is
vastly preferable to being unhappy. The question remains of how
happy is good enough.
I hope you've enjoyed this brief overview. I tried to give you a
taste of Positive Psychology, and I promise to do more in future.
I'd also love your thoughts and feedback so please send them
in!
© Professionelle Ltd 2008