Positive Psychology

Greetings Magnificent Souls to the Attract Health Build Wealth Blog where we have open and honest discussions about ourselves.

This is a place where we breakdown, breakaway, and breakthrough codependency allowing ourselves to attract health, build wealth, and live a peaceful life.

We are tired of being sick and tired.

We are tired, but we are not giving up.

We KNOW that there is something magnificent inside of us.

Because we are fighting daily, hourly, and by the minute: fighting ourselves, our kids, our spouses, we have to do things differently.

We have to break the cycle.

We don’t have a million chances.

We have to be happy, NOW. We have to find a way.

So how do we do that? How is that possible?

If you look around at what society is telling you, they’d tell you that what we’re doing is impossible.

Yet, it’s happening.

Every.

Single.

Day.

It’s happening through the practice and love that we call Awakening the Magnificent Soul.

We are Magnificent Souls, and these are our stories of healing!

Today, I wanted to talk about something I came across on one of the myriad podcasts that I listen to, I can’t for the life of me find the episode, but thank you to whomever introduced it to me. And that is a practice called positive psychology. And today, I want to talk about what it is, why it peaked my interest and why I think it’s important.

But, before we get into the discussion, don’t forget to let me know your thoughts about this episode, any feedback you have, or anything you’d like me to cover on future podcasts at the Epiphany Vault. 

Remember, you can share anonymously; it’s a safe place and I would welcome the discussion.

And on to the topic, positive psychology.

This is so so interesting to me as I have run the gamut of emotions and dysfunction in my life.

I have had professional help in the form of therapy and I have tackled things and issues independently.

Deep in my codependency, I was so lost and disconnected from myself, I was in turn, in a deep depression.

To paraphrase, positive psychology is a scientific paradigm of positivity in one’s life.

And, according to my online research, encompasses all of life’s components: personal, biological, relational, cultural, etc.

It is a relatively new offshoot of psychology and is a scientific backbone to the importance and practice of leading a fulfilled and for this show’s purpose, a healthy life. 

In some respects, it is the anti-thema to long-standing practices in the field of mental diagnoses and psycho-analysis, like depression for example.

From what I can gather, it is not an effort to diminish those long-standing psycho-practices, but an addendum to traditional therapeutic treatments.

In it, attention is given to happiness and positivity and practices to develop, enhance, and sustain these life-fulfilling practices.

Here is a great summation that I found from the movement's founders, Dr.’s Seligman and Peterson, positive psychology is concerned with three issues: positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. Positive emotions are concerned with being content with one’s past, being happy in the present and having hope for the future. Positive individual traits focus one’s strengths and virtues.

I just want to point out here, that there are naysayers to this practice but I find the promises and development of this exciting as it lends a clinical focus to positive human development.

As we do here and as I have done and continued to do, I have practiced positive psychology without really knowing. It helped me, immensely, as I found my own formula out of depression and into daily and interpersonal health and wealth, I think that’s why I was so attracted to it, but it is not a practice to diminish or completely absorb other psycho therapeutic or analytical practices. 

But, in my opinion, a concentrated effort to weave in aspects of positive psychology into healing can only be beneficial.

And we know how important cultivating positive self-love is to healing, we do that here.

Some of the tools that positive psychology uses in cultivating that are writing gratitude letters and learning optimistic thinking.

And, this is where I’m at a rolling stop, here is my asterisks, and this comes directly from my experience, although these are amazing tools for deploying a positive mental state, we must recognize that there has to be an internal connection to these activities.

As we’ve talked about before, I became EXTREMELY frustrated in my journey because I was doing these things, I was checking things off the list.

Checking activities off that were “prescribed” to me, so to speak. 

50 things I’m grateful for…check.

Say affirmations in front of mirror….check.

Say thank you….check

You see where I’m going here?

I was doing all the things, but my mental state did not improve.

It wasn’t until I believed all of the above things that those activities ACTUALLY had an impact on daily life.

But, I must say that the actual practices of these positive activities are like building up positive muscle in your conscious and your body, so in some ways, I don’t think it had an influence on my self-love journey, but it wasn’t directly correlated.

So, there’s my caveat stemming from my experience.

If you’re frustrated, I completely get it, I would take that as a cue to really look deeper into what is missing.

And, if I had to guess, it would be something internal.

You may not be INTERNALLY supported by these activities.

That’s what we try to do here is tackle that first.

And, it may look different for you, but I think the first step is fundamentally the same.

There is empirical evidence that supports positive psychology, I won’t dive into it here, but if you google it, you can see that different studies support it.

So, of course, if you’re a regular reader, you can see why this is intriguing to me. It’s crazy and somewhat validating to know that what we’ve been talking about here is actually a psychological practice that is gaining importance in the field.

In fact, I follow other thought leaders talking about codependency and a lot of them talk about narcissism and blame on the family of origin within their practices.

To me, that’s just not my approach. The way that I think about it, blame only reinforces the pain body within you.

To be blunt, I think blame is a cop out. 

I think our strength, as recovering codependents, is recognizing those causal factors but not dwelling in them. And focusing all other energies on ourselves.

Our self-love, self-worth, and self-affirmation.

That’s what I really like about positive psychology and I think it’s a great addition to the toolbox of conquering those personal mountains.

So, if this interests you, I invite you to do the research on your own and if you’re in therapy or contemplating therapy, to open up the conversation with your therapist as I really think adding this as part of complete treatment and blooming of the real true and real love that you deserve.

Thank you for joining me today Magnificent Souls.

The Epiphany Vault is always open to your feedback and thoughts.

Livin & Lovin 💗

Lilli