The 5 principles of Positive Psychology

The human being is so complex that there is no single way to study it through psychology. Given that there are several methodologies, work philosophies and ways of conceiving what should be the goal of psychologists, there are also different currents of psychology. Some of them are practically opposite, and others are complementary; In any case, knowing them helps a lot to understand human nature.

In this article we will review the principles of positive psychology, one of the most important currents, heir to the humanistic psychology developed decades ago by researchers such as Carl Rogers and abraham maslow.

The principles of positive psychology, explained

As his name suggests, positive psychology embraces a view of the human experience that emphasizes not deficits in health and well-being, but rather potential for development; that is, in what can be improved despite the fact that it already exists in some way or another in the individual. This way of seeing things has been disseminated above all by psychologists.

martin seligman and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, and in the following lines you will find a summary of the key ideas on which it is based.

1. Personal development is a dynamic process

One of the central concepts of positive psychology is the Personal development, which allows us to give meaning to our lives through projects that connect with our values and they are important to us beyond the pleasure they produce at the time of carrying them out. However, personal development is not a transit that goes from initial stages with little value to other stages that bring us great happiness; it is a dynamic process, in the sense that there is no moment that by itself is much more important than the rest. If this type of experience brings us something, it is their ability to situate ourselves in the present moment and know how to appreciate it beyond our expectations for what is to come.

2. Well-being is not the absence of problems

There are those who assume that well-being is simply the lack of things that malfunction; for example, the absence of diseases that damage our organs or our cells, of stressful stimuli from the environment, etc. Starting from this perspective, there would be a natural and “default” way of being in the world, and unless things go wrong, we will be fine.

Positive psychology brings a very different way of understanding the experience of living as a human being: in this, it is totally arbitrary to assume that the natural thing is that there are no accidents, setbacks and events that sabotage our well-being. Problems are as much a part of life as the lack of them, and any emotional management and personal development project should take them into account. The point is not to try to suppress this type of element at all costs, because it would be a totally impossible mission; the important thing is to adapt to the circumstances without assuming that we cannot improve our situation once the events that have hurt us have occurred.

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3. Subjectivity itself is an important source of information

Another of the principles of positive psychology has to do with the information from which we should start to manage our emotions, thoughts and behavior patterns. While some psychological currents propose to focus solely on objective and verifiable information by third parties (for example, our way of communicating with others), in positive psychology emphasis is placed in subjective and private psychological processes, those that can only be studied through introspection because they take place "in our heads".

Here we can see the way in which humanist philosophy gave way to positive psychology in the second half of the 20th century; In the same way that humanist thinkers focused on the unique and unrepeatable nature of each individual, this way of understanding psychology leads us not to underestimate private mental events for the simple fact that they do not have an objective embodiment immediately, and to assume that addressing the individual problems and needs of a human being involves helping them explore their own subjectivity.

4. Happiness is linked to self-awareness

There is no formula for happiness, since there are as many ways to be happy as there are human beings in the world, or even more, since each individual changes as time goes by. That is why establishing a way of life that provides us with the ability to be happy can only be elaborated by knowing our real values ​​and interests, fleeing from prejudices and social pressure to achieve a certain form of "success”.

5. Learning has value by itself

Finally, another of the principles of positive psychology is that learning should not be understood as a process of technical improvement or accumulation of information; learning is a way of being in the world, of getting involved in motivating and exciting activities, capable of showing us facets of ourselves that we did not know.

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