How can Positive Psychology increase Happiness?

I am exploring the whole question of meaning in life and happiness. I think the following talk by Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology– as a field of study is compelling and very insightful. As it moves beyond a focus on disease, to ask how can modern psychology help us become happier?  What interventions can teach us to build more happiness? “How can happiness be reliably increased?”

According to researchers happy people are healthier, more successful, and more socially engaged. Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky and Ken Sheldon in their recent and exciting  research on cognitive and emotional strategies of happy people shows that happy individuals experience and react to events and circumstances in relatively more positive and more adaptive ways than unhappy people.  The causal efficacy of happiness has focused our research group on one practical matter: interventions that build happiness

Checkout the following at TED to get a feel for this exciting development in personal growth and happiness research.

The Hero’s Journey: Archetypes provide meaning to life

“The process of listening to our own desires and acting to fulfill them is fundamental to building an identity…the happiest people always are the ones who risk enough to be fully themselves…these people don’t feel trapped by the choices they have made.” Dr. Carol Widick

Recently, I was re-reading a classic in Psychology by Carol Widick. My experience was as good if not better than the first read. I guess with age comes wisdom.  Dr Widick  provides insight and accessibility into  themes that Campbell et.al have focused on. The book is called: The Hero Within. The main adversity and metaphor is the dragon and what he means  in regard to creating or blocking our journey to find identity and a pathway to meaning.

While Carl Jung’s focus on personality types and how they prefer to think, process experiences and act, archetype show us why we do what we do and what life lessons are blocking or encouraging growth and  learning as we try to develop and mature during different life cycles.

According to Dr. Pearson “Archetypes provide the deep structure for human motivation and meaning. When we encounter them in art, literature, sacred texts, advertising—or in individuals or groups—they evoke deep feeling within us. These imprints, which are hardwired in our psyches, were projected outward by the ancients onto images of gods and goddesses. Plato disconnected these from religion, seeing them in philosophical terms as “elemental forms.” Twentieth-century psychiatrist C.G. Jung called them “archetypes.”

So what are the benefits from studying and identifying different  ”archetypes” ?  Carol Pearson has created a system of ” archetypes”  that help those struggling with establishing mature and satisfying identities. She puts  a human face on the “structures of meaning”, tells stories and provides insights that are powerful in helping to solve the existential problems blocking many people from feeling happiness and fulfillment in life.  Identifying and understanding archetypes can help you:

• Better understand your own journey in life through simple common language
• Provide opportunity for greater sense of meaning and fulfillment in your life
• Inspire and motivate others
• Cope more effectively with difficult types of people
• Increase awareness of unconscious thinking and action
• Have greater flexibility to respond to the difficulties and challenges of life
• Be more effective communicator with family, friends and people at work.