I was recently asked to write a post on basically anything I wanted to regarding Positive Psychology and type. Positive Psychology and type have added tremendous value to my life so I thought I'd share the bulk of my post here.
My personal definition of Positive Psychology is making one’s life fulfilling by focusing on what you are good at…in other words, by focusing on your strengths.
I had my first exposure to Positive Psychology when I read the book by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton “How Full is Your Bucket”. It is a very sweet book that talks about how we impact others in lots of little ways…some more positive than others. (Donald, by the way, has often been referred to as the Grandfather of Positive Psychology.)
It introduces the metaphor of the “dipper” and the “bucket” and how we all choose to add to our own or other people’s “buckets” each day by doing or saying nice things.
So many “A Ha” moments for me after reading books like “Now, Discover Your Strengths” and “Vital Friends. I couldn’t get enough of this thing called Positive Psychology. It made SO much sense to me.
One of the things I appreciated the most was focus on the positive. I had done SO many assessments and as much as there were positives….there was also always the negatives. Positive Psychology is all about what is right with people…not what is wrong.
A few years later while I was going through some personal stuff, I decided that I was going to start on personal happiness journey. And where did I turn but my local Barnes & Noble where I happened upon “Authentic Happiness” by Dr. Martin Seligman…often called the Father of Positive Psychology…what a coincidence. I couldn’t get enough of his work.
In his latest book “Flourish”, he redefines Positive Psychology to be focused on wellbeing instead of just happiness. By his definition, wellbeing consists of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment or PERMA. (Check out the book for all the details.)
Does PERMA explain everything? Is it a road map to wellbeing for every single person? No way. How could anything be? PERMA defines the categories that contribute to wellbeing. It doesn’t define a “how to” for each person. (It does give great examples such as creating a “what went well today” journal.)
In her blog titled “Do you overemphasize happiness?, Penelope Trunk, a popular career blogger who is a self-proclaimed ENTJ, wrote:
“I think I want an interesting life. Not that I want to be interesting, but I want to be interested. I'm talking about what I think is interesting to me. I want to choose things that are interesting to me over things that would make me happy.”
I think what Penelope is talking about here is the “E” in PERMA or engagement. And engagement for her means exploring interesting ideas.
In his review of “Flourish”, Richard Layard, a Wellness expert, writes “Positive psychology can come over as very individualistic – a strategy for each individual to find his own way to wellbeing, full stop.”
I think Positive Psychology is and should be individualistic. It is all about what creates wellbeing in every single one of us.
In Albert-László Barabási's book “Linked”, he writes about the six-degrees-of-separation theory which states that, on average, we are connected to anyone in the world by 6 links or degrees of separation. Six is the average but there are many people who are separated by only 3.
I can tell you that my husband, an ENFP, is one of those people. He knows EVERYONE!! Any time we meet someone new, he always knows someone that person knows. We have run into people in his network in the most obscure places…and it is never a surprise.
You could argue that he derives meaning and engagement from this network. Hmmm, this is starting to sound familiar….weren’t meaning and engagement part of PERMA?
Richard Layard further states “our wellbeing depends hugely on how others behave towards us. So, we will never achieve a better life for all of us unless we each take more trouble about the wellbeing of others.”
While I agree that the world we live in is a vast social network and that it has a great influence on us. I don’t agree that everyone or every “type” has the same concern with that network.
It took me 30+ or so years to figure out that my success was going to be heavily influenced by others. My husband probably knew it from birth. He is an incredible networker and always has been. I had to learn to prioritize networking...hmmm…could it be because Feeling is my inferior function?
Growing a network might give me a sense of accomplishment but it won’t give me a sense of engagement or meaning. The opposite is true for my husband.
I get an incredible sense of meaning and accomplishment from organizing people and things. So much so that when my daughter started Kindergarten and the PTA had no President, I agreed to step in even though I was totally new to the school. Being in charge of 30 committees and implementing an electronic communications process for parents was just the kind of thing that I love to do. Don’t they call ENTJs the Field Marshalls?
So why do I like Positive Psychology? I like it because each individual gets to decide what will give them the greatest sense of wellbeing and then they can go forth and flourish.
P.S. If you are interested in the Positive Psychology movement, I highly recommend Dr. Seligman’s U. Penn site www.authentichappiness.org. There are TONS of free resources including the VIA Strengths Survey.
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My personal definition of Positive Psychology is making one’s life fulfilling by focusing on what you are good at…in other words, by focusing on your strengths.
I had my first exposure to Positive Psychology when I read the book by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton “How Full is Your Bucket”. It is a very sweet book that talks about how we impact others in lots of little ways…some more positive than others. (Donald, by the way, has often been referred to as the Grandfather of Positive Psychology.)
It introduces the metaphor of the “dipper” and the “bucket” and how we all choose to add to our own or other people’s “buckets” each day by doing or saying nice things.
So many “A Ha” moments for me after reading books like “Now, Discover Your Strengths” and “Vital Friends. I couldn’t get enough of this thing called Positive Psychology. It made SO much sense to me.
One of the things I appreciated the most was focus on the positive. I had done SO many assessments and as much as there were positives….there was also always the negatives. Positive Psychology is all about what is right with people…not what is wrong.
A few years later while I was going through some personal stuff, I decided that I was going to start on personal happiness journey. And where did I turn but my local Barnes & Noble where I happened upon “Authentic Happiness” by Dr. Martin Seligman…often called the Father of Positive Psychology…what a coincidence. I couldn’t get enough of his work.
In his latest book “Flourish”, he redefines Positive Psychology to be focused on wellbeing instead of just happiness. By his definition, wellbeing consists of positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment or PERMA. (Check out the book for all the details.)
Does PERMA explain everything? Is it a road map to wellbeing for every single person? No way. How could anything be? PERMA defines the categories that contribute to wellbeing. It doesn’t define a “how to” for each person. (It does give great examples such as creating a “what went well today” journal.)
In her blog titled “Do you overemphasize happiness?, Penelope Trunk, a popular career blogger who is a self-proclaimed ENTJ, wrote:
“I think I want an interesting life. Not that I want to be interesting, but I want to be interested. I'm talking about what I think is interesting to me. I want to choose things that are interesting to me over things that would make me happy.”
I think what Penelope is talking about here is the “E” in PERMA or engagement. And engagement for her means exploring interesting ideas.
In his review of “Flourish”, Richard Layard, a Wellness expert, writes “Positive psychology can come over as very individualistic – a strategy for each individual to find his own way to wellbeing, full stop.”
I think Positive Psychology is and should be individualistic. It is all about what creates wellbeing in every single one of us.
In Albert-László Barabási's book “Linked”, he writes about the six-degrees-of-separation theory which states that, on average, we are connected to anyone in the world by 6 links or degrees of separation. Six is the average but there are many people who are separated by only 3.
I can tell you that my husband, an ENFP, is one of those people. He knows EVERYONE!! Any time we meet someone new, he always knows someone that person knows. We have run into people in his network in the most obscure places…and it is never a surprise.
You could argue that he derives meaning and engagement from this network. Hmmm, this is starting to sound familiar….weren’t meaning and engagement part of PERMA?
Richard Layard further states “our wellbeing depends hugely on how others behave towards us. So, we will never achieve a better life for all of us unless we each take more trouble about the wellbeing of others.”
While I agree that the world we live in is a vast social network and that it has a great influence on us. I don’t agree that everyone or every “type” has the same concern with that network.
It took me 30+ or so years to figure out that my success was going to be heavily influenced by others. My husband probably knew it from birth. He is an incredible networker and always has been. I had to learn to prioritize networking...hmmm…could it be because Feeling is my inferior function?
Growing a network might give me a sense of accomplishment but it won’t give me a sense of engagement or meaning. The opposite is true for my husband.
I get an incredible sense of meaning and accomplishment from organizing people and things. So much so that when my daughter started Kindergarten and the PTA had no President, I agreed to step in even though I was totally new to the school. Being in charge of 30 committees and implementing an electronic communications process for parents was just the kind of thing that I love to do. Don’t they call ENTJs the Field Marshalls?
So why do I like Positive Psychology? I like it because each individual gets to decide what will give them the greatest sense of wellbeing and then they can go forth and flourish.
P.S. If you are interested in the Positive Psychology movement, I highly recommend Dr. Seligman’s U. Penn site www.authentichappiness.org. There are TONS of free resources including the VIA Strengths Survey.
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