How Can We Learn to Be More Fulfilled?

Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Like most branches of medicine, much of its focus is and has been on how to help those who are sick. Why are some of us more prone to depression, substance abuse, or eating disorders? How can those suffering from psychological disorders be helped, whether through therapy or pharmaceuticals?

But what about what can be learned from those without any kind of diagnosis? What about the people who are resilient in the face of tragedy? Or those that feel largely fulfilled in their lives? What can we learn from those people? Essentially, that’s what positive psychology is all about. It focuses on the character strengths and behaviors that lead people to build a life of meaning and purpose.

THE BASICS OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Martin Seligman is considered to be the father of positive psychology, but he certainly was not the first psychologist to contemplate the more positive aspects of human nature. Abraham Maslow (remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs?) used the term “positive psychology” back in the 1950s. It’s Seligman, however, who fleshed it out into an entire branch of psychology as we know it today.

Positive psychology seeks to identify and build the mental assets that lead to a more fulfilling life experience. Seligman valued the role psychology plays in treating those suffering from mental health disorders. In fact, his early work focused on the prevention and treatment of depression. In the mid-1990s, however, he began pushing the idea that mental health should be more than the absence of illness, but also aimed at improving everyone’s lives and developing interventions that could make us all happier.

In his 2004 TED talk, Seligman explained that psychology should be just as concerned with strength as with weakness, with building strength as with repairing damage, and with making the lives of all people fulfilling as with healing pathology.

Seligman goes on to identify three different kinds of happiness. The first is what he calls the pleasant life—seeking as much pleasure and positive emotion as one can. Next is the engaged life—this is all about using one’s strengths and becoming completely absorbed in practicing them. Being engaged can bring one into a state of flow—whether it’s a musician losing himself in playing an instrument or an athlete being “in the zone.” This flow state occurs when one feels challenged in a skill in which one excels. The final kind of happiness is what Seligman calls the meaningful life, and it is achieved by understanding one’s strengths and using them in the service of something larger.

Positive psychology posits that all three types of happiness are necessary in order to achieve true wellbeing. In his 2011 book Flourish, Seligman more clearly spells out the five facets of wellbeing in what he calls the PERMA model:

• Positive emotions
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Accomplishment/Achievement

Wellbeing, according to Seligman, is more important than happiness, and all five components are key in order for individuals (or organizations) to truly flourish.

WHAT THE RESEARCH TELLS US

So, what have we learned from positive psychology studies that can lead us toward living more fulfilling lives?

Say Thank You
Several studies have shown that those who express more gratitude feel more optimistic and better about their lives. These studies didn’t look at individuals whose natural inclination is to express gratitude and compare them with those that don’t express it. These were studies in which some individuals were asked to keep a journal in which they expressed what they were thankful for, and others were asked to keep a journal of irritations or simply impactful events. The gratitude-journal keepers were happier and healthier than their peers.

In Shawn Achor’s book, The Happiness Advantage, he calls this phenomenon “the Tetris effect.” If you play Tetris for a long time, even when you’re done playing, your brain still tries to fit shapes you see into spaces. Or when you get a new car, you suddenly notice all of the other cars on the road that are the same make and model as yours. That doesn’t mean there are more of them out on the roads suddenly—it’s just that you have trained your brain to look out for them. Gratitude can work in the same way. When you train your brain to look for things to be thankful for, it will notice more and more of them.

Happy People Make People Happy
Happiness is contagious. Studies show that people who are surrounded by happy people are more likely to become happy themselves in the future. Happy friends, happy spouses, happy neighbors, happy siblings—they all have an impact on the happiness of those around them. As you can imagine, the inverse is also true. Choose to surround yourself with positive people as much as possible and extricate yourself from negative or toxic environments—or in Maestro speak, control what you can control and mitigate risk!

It’s Better to Give than to Receive
There have been a lot of studies about whether money does or does not make us happier, but what about how we spend that money? Research has found that how much money one spends on others versus oneself is a great predictor of happiness. The more people spend on others, the happier they are.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY

Positive psychology is not without its critics. Among some of the critiques is that the research findings in the field are often invalid, overstated, or misleading; too much emphasis is put on self-reported data; and that it has a cultural and ethnocentric bias.

Uli Schimmack of the University of Toronto has created something called the “R index.” It’s a statistical tool—in the form of a letter grade—used for estimating the replicability of research studies, researchers, and research journals. The Journal of Positive Psychology consistently gets a C, meaning much of the research has been difficult to replicate.

Other criticisms have questioned the ties between positive psychology and religion. While Seligman claims that positive psychology is based in rigorous science, some have spoken up about their doubts regarding his mathematical assumptions, and the fact that some studies that have since been found problematic are still presented without any caveats.

POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY GOES TO WORK

While there are studies that have been called into question, many have been conducted that show clear evidence of the benefits of positive psychology, especially in the workplace. Genesis Health System, a struggling hospital system facing budget cuts and layoffs, for example, began initiating positive psychology interventions in 2017 in the form of things like gratitude exercises and increased praise. The results, even in a challenging environment, were lower levels of burnout and stress from the employees as well as an improved patient experience.

None of us should be surprised by the fact that those who find more meaning in their work have higher job satisfaction and are more productive. The goal of positive psychology is to figure out how more individuals can find this fulfillment and how meaning can be cultivated within organizations.

This month our Maestro Mastery blogs will explore positive psychology and investigate how it can be used to help strengthen and motivate sales teams. Sales professionals likely hear the word “no” more than most other professionals. That’s why it’s particularly important to know how morale, meaning, and support can be boosted within sales teams in order to make our employees and our companies more resilient.

Thank you for reading, and thank you in advance for getting in touch with us at mastery@maestrogroup.co to schedule your training!