The 5 benefits of Positive Psychology

Until not so long ago, psychology was assumed to be a scientific field aimed at correcting what is wrong. Thus, it was practically an extension of health disciplines, especially psychiatry and neurology, and of strategies for “correcting” children's behavior.

However, the development of this discipline was showing that that conception of psychology seen as "the arrangement of what is broken" was extremely limited (and generator of stigma). Why settle for using what we are learning about the human mind only to help those who consider that they are in a bad situation compared to the rest of the people? Why can't we use that knowledge not just to lose less, but to gain more?

Positive Psychology has its reason for being in these two questions, and aims to help us change to get closer to the way we would like to be to promote the most ambitious personal or professional projects of our lives. In this article we will see what its benefits are and how it contributes to personal development.

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The main benefits of Positive Psychology

Positive Psychology starts from the philosophical current of humanism, which indicates that subjective experiences, that that we feel and that we cannot express in words, can have as much or more value than our behavior observable. For this reason, psychologists who work from this paradigm seek to achieve effects that go beyond the objective, and that connects with the motivations and the true needs and concerns of people.

Let's see a brief summary about the benefits of Positive Psychology and how it brings us closer to these kinds of goals related to the emotional and what is truly significant for our lives.

1. It makes us improve in the regulation of emotions

From Positive Psychology it is understood that what we feel is not the direct result of what is happening around us, but of how we interpret and perceive what is happening around us. That is why it is important to know how to manage our emotions, since on many occasions an inadequate regulation of these makes us see problems where there are none.

Anger, for example, is capable of making us sacrifice many things in order to do something that not only does not reports no benefit, but also harms us more than we were when we began to feel that way. way.

With this objective, psychologists who start from the paradigm of Positive Psychology train people to adjust their emotions in the best possible way and make them work for you, and not against you. At the end of the day, if our emotional side exists, it is because most of the time it is useful to us to a greater or lesser extent. measure, although there are always cases in which this is not the case and it is worth learning to minimize its effects harmful.

It is not about suppressing them, but about ensuring that some emotional states do not overshadow the influence of others that should have a modulating role over the former.

2. It helps us to have a realistic self-concept

Self-concept is the set of beliefs about oneself that constitutes all that we know about who we are. Depending on how it is, we will feel more or less capable of performing certain tasks or to be well integrated into a certain social circle.

Positive Psychology helps us to have a self-concept that fits our abilities and real qualities and our ability to improve in certain tasks, and this translates into a good self-esteem.

This he does by putting our apparent failures in perspective. and showing us the way in which a large part of their existence is due to elements of our environment that we could not control, but that we can choose how they affect us.

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3. It gives guidelines to start projects and transform habits

Starting a new project requires leaving our comfort zone. That is, assuming a certain degree of discomfort that will arrive at the beginning, but will eventually fade as we go. seeing the fruits of our efforts (fruits that we would not have reached if we had not made an effort to get out of the routine).

Thus, Positive Psychology immerses us in dynamics that force us to take control of our lives and to not letting limiting beliefs restrict our true freedom.

4. It allows us to develop leadership

Not everyone can be a leader 24 hours a day, but we all have the ability to lead groups in certain contexts and types of work.

As Positive Psychology not only focuses on the individual but also takes into account the social element of psychology, gives us the tools to adopt a leadership style that suits us well in a certain facet of our lives, whether personally or professionally.

5. Invites us to develop our own philosophy of life

As we have seen so far, the benefits of Positive Psychology have to do with the empowerment of people: allow them to be a person who makes important decisions and who knows how to take their consequences in the most constructive way possible.

Therefore, an effect derived from all this is that thanks to these dynamics we are generating our own philosophy of life, a chain of principles and values ​​that allows us to make sense of what we experience, instead of just following the ideas of others who have never been in our situation.