The Fruits of Positive Psychology

This episode we review the contributions of positive psychology to human flourishing by summarizing and analyzing Dr. Martin Seligman’s book “Flourish.”  Positive psychology’s current contributions to understanding flourishing can be quickly summarized with the acronym PERMA (P: Positive emotions; E: Engagement or flow; R: Relationships—positive ones; M: Meaning outside oneself; A: Accomplishment for its own sake).  One needs to have a combination or balance of all these to achieve human flourishing.

The root of self-transcendence directly leads to Engagement, Meaning, and Accomplishment while self-transcendence is a key factor in achieving positive relationships.  Additionally, self-transcendence aids us to deal constructively or positively with all our emotions either positive or negative ones by enabling us to see how all these emotions can lead to personal growth in our virtues or the good.

The root of the spiritual dimension particularly the virtues of optimism or hope and self-control or temperance are highlighted and proven to have substantial positive effects on our biologic and social dimensions.  

Lastly, we discuss how the roots of harmonious multi-dimensional living with an orientation to the basic goods can answer some of positive psychology’s most pressing questions.  Those questions are: 1) how do we maximize our human flourishing, and 2) how can we ensure that we are truly achieving human flourishing not only subjectively but also objectively?  

References

Flourish by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman

Wikipedia has a nice review of positive psychology

Two additional books on happiness or human flourishing from two popular talk show hosts that have practical perspectives are Dennis Prager’s book Happiness is a Serious Problem and Hugh Hewitt’s The Happiest Life.   Professor of government and philosophy J. Budziszewski’s book entitled How and How Not to be Happy chronicles why so many areas within our lives do not lead to happiness and argues for supreme happiness in seeing God.

E-mail for comments and questions at: Rootsofflourishing@gmail.com