Few people have faced the eternal question of how to be happy and live a good life with as much rigor and dedication as Dr. Martin Seligman. In 1998, when he was president of the American Association of Psychologists, he made a resounding appeal to his colleagues to "begin to focus and understand and consolidate human strengths." It was the starting gun to the school of positive psychology, which recommends discovering and promoting what awakens human generosity, courage or creativity, what could be called the art-science of happiness.
Traditionally, classical psychotherapy, as systematized by Sigmund Freud, viewed humans as troubled and distressed beings in need of help and repair. Martin Seligman's appeal collided with current clinical practice for decades, as could be seen in the reference book of psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, the DSM, which dedicates thousands of entries to talk about anxiety, depression, guilt, anger, shame and fear ... but hardly anything about hope and joy, and very little about compassion, forgiveness or love.
In contrast, positive psychology relies on neuroscience and psychological research to generate tools and concepts that can help people manage their day-to-day life, consolidate their emotional intelligence and understand and prevent human stumbling blocks and weaknesses that They are part of our psyche, but that we can learn, to a large extent, to manage. «Our way of thinking does not have to be forever. One of the most important discoveries in psychology in the last twenty years is that people can choose how they think.
What we want is not blind optimism, but flexible optimism, open-eyed optimism. We have to be able to use pessimism's sense of reality when we need to, without having to get stuck in its dark shadows. My definition of optimism is to believe that setbacks are normal and that you can overcome them with your own actions, "says Seligman.
Humans can live a pleasant life, that is, a life centered on physical pleasures, gratification and companionship; a good life, focused on the discovery and creative use of our virtues and strengths, or a valuable life, when we put our strengths at the service of something greater than ourselves.
One of the most interesting theories about human happiness developed by Seligman is that of the three vital dimensions in which we can choose to live and cultivate happiness. Humans, he says, can live a pleasant life, that is, a life centered on physical pleasures, gratification and companionship; a good life (focused on the discovery and creative use of our virtues and strengths), or a valuable life (when we put our strengths at the service of something greater than ourselves). We can stay in any of these stages or reach any of the following two.
This theory, supported by years of research, has the advantage of reconciling two competing approaches to human happiness: the more individualistic approach - which insists on the importance of taking care of ourselves and our strengths - and a more altruistic view, which values individual sacrifice for a higher good.
Contrary to what was believed until a few years ago, we now know for sure that positive emotions are not a biological luxury, a good thing, but are essential for good mental and emotional health. However, numerous studies show that the vast majority of people still believe that working on our weaknesses is more important than working on our strengths. And it is that we have a brain programmed to survive that has evolved for survival and reproduction, not for happiness. This makes us very sensitive to negative emotions, which we enlarge and memorize more easily than positive ones. For this reason, many of the proposals of the school of positive psychology have to do with training the brain in a positive way, with small exercises that strengthen the mind like a muscle, such as this one proposed by Martin Seligman:
“For powerful evolutionary reasons, most of us are better at analyzing negative events than positive ones. To overcome the pessimistic bias in our brains, we need to practice our ability to think positive things: every night for a week, spend ten minutes before going to sleep to write down three things that went well for you that day, and also point to what went well. You can use a journal or the computer, but it is important to have a physical record of what you write. The three things need not be flashy or important - "My friend bought me my favorite ice cream on the way home" - but they can be ("My sister just gave birth to a baby"). »
If you have written that your friend bought you ice cream, for example, also write down why he did it: "Because my friend is sometimes very detailed" or "Because I called him at work to remind him to stop by the supermarket." Write about why good things happen in your life may seem strange at first, but if you do it for a week it will be easier for you ».
Seligman says that this exercise not only makes us feel happier, but it can cause real addiction.