Positive psychology is not getting the rectification that it should. Many dismiss it as "happy talk." I disagree. When I work with children who need some positive reinforcement in their lives I find that this technique provides much needed balance. It allows students to focus on and develop their own positive emotions, experiences and allows them to improve their lives by finding out who their authentic self is. It is important for everyone to focus on their emotional and personal strengths. Instituting the idea of keeping a journal I have found that it allows you the ability to keep track of changes in your life as well as letting you to recognize the positive events that occur each day as well as learning to change the negative ways of thinking as being your dominant thoughts and instead embracing the impact positive events have on your life.
An example to try for yourself is, every evening, write down four positive things, events or moments that happened that day and think about why it happened. Record the why as well. At the end of the week notice what has taken place and continue the assignment for a month. Let me know what happens.
Write an email or text to a friend or family member explaining why you feel grateful for what they have done in the past. Notice how it made you feel or record the reaction you received.
Let's learn how to not dwell on negative events or emotions but instead focus on the positive ones. Everyday try to think about what went right throughout the day. Journal about it. Over time you will be able to be more positive and happier.
We all need balance in our lives and this year has made that hard for most. Our society has become obsessed with searching for what is wrong with ourselves, the commercials have us convinced that we all should be on medication. Try to remember that good and bad have always complimented one another so lets try to focus more on the good.
Postive psychology focuses on personal strengths, focuses on relationships, and communicating with each other, improves the classroom and workplace, eliminates failure by changing how you look at failure and not having it take over your life. Remember failure is just another way to teach you how to become stronger. Children would never learn without failure because we learn from our mistakes. Failure allows us to rethink, reconsider and find new strategies to achieve our goals. I have failed at many things over the course of my life. I had experienced both small failures and large ones. It is okay. I never enjoyed failing but it has always allowed me to become flexible, become humble, more open-minded and challenged me to try something new. Failure is life's great teacher. It has allowed me to reach for the stars and moon. If you were to try to go through life without failing at anything, then are you even living life at all. It is important to take some risks in order to succeed. Failures help mold us and allows us to try and try again.
The best example of failure is a young baby learning how to walk, that baby will fall down many times, we all know that the baby will walk and it will take many attempts before he/she will. If we realized this in every new venture we take then we wouldn't be so afraid of failure. WE have to celebrate the journey not only the outcome. In life we will have many trials, tribulations, upsets, setbacks and failures. It is all part of life and all should be embraced.
Some reasons why it is necessary to fail are:
Experience - which gives us a deeper understanding of life
Knowledge - what did we learn from the experience?
Resilience - you learn to realize that things do not happen overnight it takes an incredible amount of dedication and work.
Growth - life is meant to help us grow and improve. We learn to appreciate and understand why we are doing the things we are doing.
Value - what are we bringing to the table, what would you change next time
Everyone first has to understand that it is okay to fail but it is not okay to give up. Life is a journey and in reality the journeys you take will have ups and downs but they will mold and shape you into a better person. Just try not to be so hard on yourself.