It is human nature to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. Life is the sum of all experiences in the whole life process. Since pain is inevitable, we should try to make happiness more. Happiness can cover up the pain, so that the whole life experience will make you happier. Of course, people's beauty and Excellence are as real as diseases, chaos and sadness, and happiness does not need to be an antidote to pain. Happiness can coexist with pain.
How to build a happy life? Let's go into positive psychology and give it a try. About two years ago, I first read the book Positive Psychology, and I have always liked it. I open it from time to time. Positive psychology is completely different from "chicken soup". It is based on scientific theories and experiments, which has practical guiding significance for us to know ourselves, improve ourselves and improve ourselves. For me, positive psychology, on the one hand, opened my understanding of it and expanded the knowledge boundary related to it. On the other hand, it provides several elements of building a happy life and points out the direction worthy of attention and development; At the same time, it also shapes the belief of helping self-realization through positive psychology.
The recommended book today is Christopher? Peterson's "Positive Psychology", by Christopher? Peterson, Arthur F.Thumau is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, a famous psychologist, a former chairman of the Clinical Psychology Committee, one of the most popular psychologists in the world, and the director of the academic department of VIA Personality Research Center in the United States. He is one of the founders of positive psychology, and his research in the fields of optimism, health and happiness is world-renowned. 20 10 Dr. Peterson won the "Green Apple Award", the highest teaching honor award of the University of Michigan.
This book is suitable for the general public and can help people know themselves, life and realize the value of life. Next, around the theme of the book, I will give you a brief introduction to the essential contents and ideas.
[If! SupportLists] 1, [endif] What about positive psychology?
Positive psychology not only pays attention to diseases, but also devotes itself to discovering and cultivating talents, making daily life more satisfying and helping healthy people realize the value of life.
Positive psychology advocates that human beings should make a new explanation of many psychological phenomena and problems with a positive attitude, so as to stimulate some actual or potential positive qualities and positive strength inside everyone and make everyone move towards their own happiness smoothly. Positive psychology advocates taking people's positive strength, kindness and virtue as the research object, and emphasizes that psychology should not only help people know how to survive and develop under certain "adversity" conditions, but also help people learn how to establish high-quality personal life and social life under normal circumstances.
It adopts scientific principles and methods to study happiness and advocates the positive orientation of psychology, so as to study the positive psychological quality of human beings and pay attention to their health, happiness and harmonious development.
Positive psychology has three themes:
1, positive subjective experience (happiness, pleasure, gratitude, achievement)
2. Positive personal characteristics (personality strength, talent, interests and values)
3. Active institutions (family, school, business organization, community and society)
2. necessities; key element
0 1 Pleasant and positive experience
Pleasure includes sensory pleasure and advanced pleasure. Sensory pleasure is related to skin and body organs, while advanced pleasure is related to thoughts. Whether it is intense excitement or quiet satisfaction, the feeling of pleasure is always beautiful. Many people are happy while feeling pleasure, and try to maintain or enhance this feeling.
Expected happiness or expected effect, through experimental research, our choice of this moment is based on the expectation of happiness at that moment. Most of us feel more accurate about the expectation of pleasure. Of course, people will still make mistakes after knowing how to predict the future, because there are some psychological factors that have an impact on pleasure. For example, the exposure effect (when we are exposed to something relatively more, we tend to like it) and the donation effect (we all tend to like what others give us, even if we don't really want it or can make full use of it).
Emotion has a specific behavioral tendency. Negative emotions remind us of the danger of the environment, while positive emotions represent safety and can guide us to participate in activities to enhance our behavior and cognitive ability. Positive emotions can eliminate the physiological reaction caused by negative emotions.
A good mood will not only permeate our thoughts, but also affect the whole body. If you are in a good mood, you will be energetic and optimistic no matter what you do. In the past few decades, psychologists have paid more attention to bad emotions, and the ability to experience positive emotions is called hedonic ability by Baumier. This ability basically refers to positive emotions, that is, the range of positive emotions experienced by individuals (happiness, interest, activities, etc. People who are in a good mood when they are alone are often in a good mood when they are with others.
happiness
Aristotle's view of happiness: "truly face the inner self", the focus of happiness is that people should discover and develop their most valuable places, and make full use of these abilities and talents to pursue better things, including the well-being of others and even all mankind.
Research shows that happiness can predict life satisfaction better than happiness. Quality of life is a comprehensive symbol of all emotions, experiences, expectations and achievements related to a better life. Subjective well-being is usually used to define a relatively high level of positive emotions, a relatively low level of negative emotions, and a good overall evaluation of life.
Some personality traits-optimism, extroversion, intuition, self-esteem, internal control and happiness-are moderately to highly correlated, as are lower neuroticism. Happy people can help themselves to have more positive qualities, while unhappy people do the opposite.
Four paths to happiness: pleasant experience, dedication, meaning and success.
03 positive thoughts
Positive thinking can enhance insight into life, and positive emotions can enhance a person's cognitive and behavioral abilities. People who are optimistic (happy, hopeful and sunny) can find more important ways to get a better life in the psychological sense.
Anthropologist Linnell Tiger defines optimism as: "An emotion or attitude is related to the expectation of future social or material life-an evaluation of social expectation, which is beneficial to oneself or can bring pleasure to oneself."
Freud believed that optimism is a part of human nature.
People's pursuit of goals is an expectation value, and all realistic human communication can exist in the form of goals. When people find that they encounter resistance in the process of pursuing their set goals, they will add optimism to their self-adjustment. In the face of difficulties, people who can firmly believe that their goals can be achieved are optimists, and vice versa. Optimism can bring lasting motivation to achieve goals, while pessimism will lead to giving up goals.
There are different levels of optimism, and great optimism can lead to the expected results, because great optimism will bring a universal state full of passion and tenacity. A little optimism can lead to the expected results, because it may preset certain behaviors to adapt to the given environmental conditions.
The power of character
Personality strength is idiosyncratic in a sense, with individual differences, and a good personality is the synthesis of a series of positive characteristics.
Good character and its components are highly respected at the moral level. "Happiness is the goal of life, and virtue is the foundation of happiness"-Tonas Jefferson.
VIA classification (VIA is action value association), 6 virtues and 24 character strengths:
1) The power of wisdom and knowledge: creativity, curiosity, love of learning, open mind and insight.
2) Willpower: steadfast, brave, persistent and enthusiastic.
3) Humanitarian strength: kindness, love and social wisdom.
4) The power of justice: integrity, leadership and teamwork spirit.
5) The power of temperance: forgiveness/sympathy, humility/modesty, prudence and self-discipline.
6) Excellent strength: appreciation, gratitude, hope, humor, piety/spirituality to beauty and advantages.
05 value
Part of a good life is to show and pursue the values we advocate. For individuals, value not only means the goal of action, but also the standard of evaluating the goal.
Professor William Scott believes that value is a relatively correct goal, which is regarded as: (a) inner beauty: this is the ultimate goal; Exactly right: correct in all cases; Universal truth: applicable to all people.
Values are the beliefs of individuals and collective members about the expected goals. They transcend the specific environment until we choose to act, evaluate others and ourselves, and rank them according to their relative importance.
The universal structure of ten human values in the world: achievement, kindness, obedience, enjoyment, strength, security, self-guidance, encouragement, tradition and universality.
Interests, abilities and achievements
Gallup's research conclusion: Doing the best job every day is the job you love.
Part of a good life is to understand these interests, be passionate and devote yourself to them.
If you stick to your interests and abilities, you will achieve something, no matter how big or small.
Based on hundreds of elites in different fields, Charles Murray drew a general conclusion about achievements:
[If! Support lists]1) [endif] Scholars: People who can achieve outstanding achievements in many fields need all kinds of superb abilities;
[If! SupportLists]2)[endif] effort is the key;
[If! SupportLists]3)[endif] Mentors are very important;
[If! SupportLists]4)[endif] A suitable time and place is very necessary;
[If! Excellence and Excellence often appear in a social culture that believes that life has lofty goals. In such a culture, people believe in their own strength.
health
The World Health Organization gives a broad and comprehensive definition of health: "Health is a perfect state of body, mind and society, not just the absence of disease or weakness." The research and discussion on mental health has always lagged behind physical health.
In the current definition of positive mental health, Mary Johada puts forward six qualities, which can lead to what we usually think of as mental health:
Self-acceptance
An accurate understanding of reality
Autonomy (calmly coping with social pressure)
Ability to control the environment
Grow, develop and mature.
Unity and integrity of personality
08 Positive interpersonal relationships
The ability to love and be loved is regarded as the essential tendency of human beings, which plays a vital role in the whole life process from infants to old age. The author summarizes positive psychology in a few words: others are important.
Equivalence theory shows that whether intimate relationship-friendship or love can be maintained depends on whether both parties think that what they get from the relationship is directly proportional to what they give. Equitable relationships can last, and unequal relationships will be broken.
Three attachment modes of attachment theory. Some people like intimacy and find it easy to establish intimate relationships; We hope that the other party is trustworthy and reliable, and we will seek comfort and support from them, and so will they. This relationship is safe. Others feel uncomfortable about intimacy, and it is difficult to trust our partners and keep a certain emotional distance from others. I prefer independence to intimacy when I am sad, and I prefer to retreat rather than seek comfort. This kind of interpersonal relationship is evasive. There is a third kind of people who are often worried about being left out by others and may want more intimacy, which may be impossible or unwilling for their partners. This relationship is contradictory.
Like means that people have a positive attitude towards each other, and some factors can lead to this positive attitude: proximity, similarity, meeting needs, higher ability, attractiveness and so on.
When hobbies coexist with the understanding of similarity and the expectation of reciprocity, we call it friendship.
When a relationship is mutually exclusive, transferable and tendentious, the two sides become interdependent, which is what we call this relationship love.
09 authorized organization
A good family, a good school, a good workplace, a good society and a good religion are all organizations that help its members get a better life.