Psychology Videos: The New Era of Positive Psychology

Speech Presentation
Name:
Institutional Affiliation:
Speech Presentation
The New Era of Positive Psychology
In the talk dubbed the 11th Reason to be Optimistic, Dr. Martin Seligman addresses the development of psychology over the past 60 years analyzing the use of the disease model to make miserable people less miserable (Seligman, 2004). The need for a new approach in psychology was because of the following:
Psychologists became victimologists and pathologizers
They forgot improving normal lives and high talent
The methodologies did not make people happier by improving normal lives
The need to make people happier led scholars to study positive psychology. Seligman suggests that the discipline should be concerned with strength as with weakness, build the best things in life and repair the worst, and make the lives of normal people fulfilling with nurturing.
The science of positive psychology involves research to identify the three types of happy living (Seligman, 2004).
The pleasant life. It involves having as many pleasures as possible and acquiring the skills that enhance them. Seligman adds that this form of a happy life is 50% heritable, not modifiable, and habituates rapidly.
The good life. It is described as an interaction of pressure and flow. While pressure has a raw feeling, during flow there is no feeling increasing the level of concentration. It is achieved by identifying signature strengths and recrafting work, love, play, friendship, and parenting to derive more flow.
The meaningful life. It consists of knowing what your highest strengths are and using them to belong to and in the service of something larger than you are.
A function of the three forms of life regarding life satisfaction shows:
Pursuit of pleasure has almost no contribution
The pursuit of meaning is the strongest
The pursuit of engagement is strong
Conclusively, where pressure matters is where both meaning and engagement exist. A combination of the three contribute to...