What is the relationship between emotion and positive psychology?

What is the relationship between emotion and positive psychology?

Positive psychology constitutes of two entities, the subjective entity, and an individual entity. At a subjective level, positive psychology entails valued subjective experiences such as wellbeing, satisfaction in the past, the flow of happiness in the present, and hope and optimism for the future (Fredrickson, 2001). On the individual entity, it comprises positive personal traits such as forgiveness, love, kindness, perseverance, originality, compassion, spirituality, courage, and interpersonal skills. Positive psychology can also be achieved in group levels to nurture civic values towards the betterment of citizenship and responsibilities among individuals. Emotions, on the other hand, are the multiple states of feelings that result in physical changes that influence an individual’s behavior and thoughts. Emotions may be positive or negative, thus affect the psychological nature of an individual in different ways. Positive emotions have physical resources, intellectual resources, social, and mental resources. Positive emotions engage individuals to explore novel people, situations, and ideas by encouraging approach behavior (Fredrickson, 2001). Emotions are related to psychological phenomena such as moods, motivations, temperaments, and personalities. Reflecting positive emotions contributes to wellbeing. By reflecting emotions, an individual may notice the wrong and right things in their life and change their desired focus about them. Positive emotions broaden people’s thoughts and to understand depressive systems.

The subjective wellbeing of an individual, which is attributed to be emotions and psychology, contributes to predicting how people can manage and experience their working environment (Fredrickson, 2001). This, in turn, builds enduring a personal resource that ranges from physical and intellectual resources to social and psychological support.

Q2. What has actually been shown in Positive Psychology about greater wellbeing in healthy minds other than the absence of any recognised mental disorder?

Positive psychology affects wellbeing of individual, healthy minds and hinders the presence of any recognized mental disorder. Positive psychology develops an evidence-based intervention that improves wellbeing of an individual. This complements the results that arise from synthesizing a narrative about the recoveries of an individual from mental illness (Lambert, Passmore, & Holder, 2015). The improvements provide a valid ecological insight to experience mental illness and to develop a purposeful and meaningful life in an individual. Positive psychology emphasizes an individual’s own goals and strengths, thus explore the integration and interventions needed to promote wellbeing. According to Seligman (2002), there are three paths to happiness that represent distinct types of wellbeing. The three examples of wellbeing include a pleasant life, good life, and meaningful life.

The psychological wellbeing of a person promotes healthy living, autonomy, and personal growth and development. It enables one to feel relatively confident in them and have positive self-esteem (Lambert et al., 2015). This makes a person be actively involved in positive vibes, thus relieves them from stress. Stress may result in mental illness and abnormality in an individual. Besides, it enables an individual to express their range of feelings and build and maintain good relations with others (Lambert et al., 2015). People who lack positive wellbeing experience low mental health that results in mental health problems that arise in stress and upset. Positive psychology provides psychotherapy that is effective other than drug therapy in treating mental disorders. Positive psychology, when combined with drug therapy, can address a wide range of psychiatric disorders that includes anxiety and panic.

Q3. Use one or more concepts within positive psychology to discuss how the pursuit of happiness may be achieved?

Happiness can be defined as an enduring state of mind that consists of the capacity of a person to use his skills and experiences to enrich their lives and have a worldly pleasure for daily living (Seligman, Steen, Park, & Peterson, 2005). There are different levels of happiness within a person. Several factors are connected to happiness, which includes age, family and connectedness, and education and money. Life satisfaction increases with an increase in an individual’s age. Besides, social relationships and family are correlated with happiness. For example, married people tend to be happier than single people. The more a person has friends, the happier they become. Education and employment also may make a person be happy. According to Seligman et al. (2005), there are three prominent pursuits to happiness, which consist of a pleasant life, which is the enjoyment of daily pleasures, good life which is using skills for the enrichment and meaningful life that contributes to the greater good of an individual. The pleasant pursuit of happiness can be achieved when an individual learns to savors and appreciate the fundamental pleasures of their lives. These pleasures can be made through companionship and getting the essential body needs such as food, clothing, water, and shelter. Besides, pleasant life entails having many pleasures and skills to amplify pleasures. The second pursuit of happiness is a good life. A good life can be achieved by a person discovering their unique virtues and strengths. After the discovery of virtues and strengths, then they employ them creatively to enhance their life (Seligman et al., 2005). A person needs to recraft their work, friendship, and even love and use most of their time to improve on their values to have more flow of happiness in life. The last pursuit of happiness is a meaningful life. It comes when a person uses their talents in the greater good to feel a sense of fulfillment in life (Seligman et al., 2005). They look for activities that benefit their lives at that of others to make the world feel a better place for them.

Q4. What project would you propose and implement to maximize increasing happiness in general populations?

To increase happiness in the general population, I would propose a positive emotion model. This is the ability to remain optimistic in life and view other people’s past, present, and future in a constructive way (Seligman, 2002. A positive view promotes connectivity, social relations, and inspiration to others. It enables people to enjoy their daily work and persevere with the challenges they face in life by remaining optimistic about the possible outcomes in their lives. We should conform to groups that can make everyone happy.

For a better society, we need to change our social norms in ways to promote happiness. We should spend time with friends who are stressed to make them happy. Every member of the society should be assured of a good income, healthy life expectancy, given good social support and generosity. There are many ways to extend happiness to the population, including to spend more money on others and to train oneself to mind for happiness.

References

Fredrickson, B. L. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. American psychologist, 56(3), 218.

Lambert, L., Passmore, H. A., & Holder, M. D. (2015). Foundational frameworks of positive psychology: Mapping wellbeing orientations. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 56(3), 311.

Seligman, M. E. (2002). Positive psychology, positive prevention, and positive therapy. Handbook of positive psychology, 2(2002), 3-12.

Seligman, M. E., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: empirical validation of interventions. American psychologist, 60(5), 410.