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hey this is Leo for actualised org and in this video we're gonna talk about positive psychology all right so positive psychology what is it why is it important why should we care about it this is a very fascinating topic and this is something that can potentially transform your life if you know about it and you do a little bit of study into it this is a really powerful idea so let's talk about positive psychology positive psychology we need to distinguish between that and ordinary psychology or what we might say is negative psychology but it's just called normal psychology is the study of problems in human behavior so traditionally from the founding of psychology back in the late 1800s with with William James and with Freud and with Carl Jung and all that kind of traditional pop culture you know psychotherapy that we think about as being psychology all of that was about helping people overcome their neuroses helping people overcome severe crippling mental disorders so it could be schizophrenia severe depression suicidal thoughts just all sorts of anxiety and panic and phobias that kind of stuff and that's actually not what most people are having problems with most people in society are more normal they're not abnormal they're not dysfunctional they don't have these severe manic depressive episodes or or suicidal thoughts most people are not that way so what positive psychology is is it's a new movement really that started I would say in the last 50 years but especially even in the last 20 or 30 years where psychologists research psychologists are now instead of focusing on all the problem cases in human society they're focusing on all the ways that we can improve normal life functioning and we could take it from a normal level to an optimal level so I'm actually going to quote some of the founders of positive psychology on what they define positive psychology as being and this is Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi so what they say is to find and nurture genius and talent and to make normal life more fulfilling that is the mission of positive psychology so it's to find and nurture genius and talent and to make normal life for normal people like you and me that are not severely dysfunctional how to make it better I love this because this is well what I'm about this is what the actualized org is about it's all about how to take yourself from an ordinary life to an extraordinary life right I'm not so much interested in looking for people that have severe dysfunctions I think that there's branches of old-school psychology that are good at dealing with that what I'm interested in is how to achieve peak performance in your life like if I'm just living kind of a normal normal existence the way I see some of my friends living the way I see some of my my family members living or I just see people in society living if I take that and I say well what if I want to live like an amazing life what if I want to live a kind of life that I would be proud to write about in a memoir what if I would live the kind of life that I'll be proud to write a book about what if I lived the kind of life that people would look at and would say like that person is doing something special something different there's something different about that person and also the way that you're feeling is different you're feeling more fulfilled you're feeling more excited you're feeling higher levels of happiness there's something going on there for me the question is how do I achieve that because to me that's what life is about it's living life big living life to the fullest I don't know why people are living like small I mean I actually dunno why but I don't want to go into all those reasons right now the reason what I'm ultimately after here is how to live a big kind of life and that's what positive psychology is after except the difference is that positive psychology of course is is an academic branch of science right so this is actually a science positive psychologists are out there researching and looking at for example what are the scientific ways of improving and increasing happiness what are the scientific ways of getting higher performance in your life whether it's a business relationships fitness whatever what are the ways to actually nurture your genius and your talents what are the different mindsets that you can have that make people resourceful what is the difference for example psychologically speaking between a very successful person maybe an entrepreneur who's earning lots of money and is also fulfilled on the inside versus somebody who is earning lots of money and has a lot of external success so to say so to speak but isn't fulfilled on the inside what's the difference between those two and then of course why are there people that are so struggling with their lives that are having such enormous difficulty even getting to the point where they're able to pay the bills on time and they're able to maintain a healthy relationship you know what is going on there and a lot of times that's not some horrible psychological dysfunction it's something else it's you know limiting beliefs its habits that we have it's a misunderstanding of how to how to use their psychological resources to create the kind of life that they want it's falling into a victim mind my mindset so that's what positive psychology is about that's what I'm about let me talk about a little bit more depth of about positive psychology so really technically speaking Martin Seligman is kind of quoted as being the father of positive psychology he wrote a couple of really classic books on on human performance and one of those is called learned optimism where he talks about the the difference between mindsets and pause and optimistic people and pessimistic people it's a psychology classic then he also wrote a book called authentic happiness which talks about the the scientific findings that he has discovered about how to actually be happy truly happy in your life so he's a he's a college university professor there's also Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi very complicated long name to pronounce but he's the author of flow and he's also one of the founders of positive psychology classic book flow talks about what it takes to get into the state of flow and stages and flow is a state that you get into when you become totally absorbed totally in the moment totally focused for example when you're when you're playing a sport or maybe you're you're really killing it at the gym or you're killing it at work or like you're writing something amazing and you're just totally immersed in it and you're totally happy and you lose self-consciousness that is the state of flow and so he wrote a whole book on that and so the two of them and also others like Sonja Lyubomirsky she wrote the book called the how of happiness another awesome book about some of the scientific findings about happiness which I actually cover in my how to feel happy video I cover a lot of her points so these are some of the figures in positive psychology right now and there's many others I'm not going to name them all you can start to do a research and start to immerse yourself by reading some of these books and you'll you'll hear about other people right now that are really forging a new era of psychology I think the 21st century is amazing because the 20th century was all about the psychology of dysfunction and that was good I'm sure that helps many people who are dysfunctional but there are far more people that are functional that want to be optimal and the question and the challenge for the 21st century is what do we need to teach them what do we need to tell them to get themselves from a functional to an optimal level and I love the fact that there are guys out there guys and and women that are out there right now researching this stuff they're actually running scientific studies in universities they're they're doing surveys they're thinking about this they're researching and they're bringing those findings or publishing it in books or publishing it in and research papers and they're giving talks about it in places conferences like Ted where they give a lot of be kind of the facts about how our psychology works because this then informs the techniques that we use the methods that we apply the things that we pursue so thumbs up to those guys and gals that are doing that right now I think actually what I would say the father who the father is of positive psychology I would actually say it's not more in Seligmann even though he kind of coined the term and it has been popularizing it I think it goes back to Abraham Maslow who in the 1950s did some amazing just profound work powerful work on self-actualization theory and self-actualization it's the reason that I named my my website actualized org because self-actualization is what it's all about this is how to become the optimal human being how to achieve excellence as a human being how to create an excellent life what that entails psychologically speaking way too rich of a concept to go into here I actually have many videos on self actualization go ahead and search for those but I would say that really positive psychology started with Abraham Maslow and then it it started to take root from that and now it's really in full force and I think that over the next 10 20 50 years we're gonna have a lot of new findings and a lot of new information coming out of that from universities all across the country and all across the world and I'm really excited to read to read about more of that stuff so awesome now we've compared old school psychology to this new school psychology that we've got what about comparing positive psychology to the self-help movement how are those similar and how are those two different it's a fascinating question I'm actually curious what my answer is so that myself and I think I would say this positive psychology is the research the technical research branch right this is the difference this is done in universities they're actually doing studies they're doing experiments they're doing science self-help movement is more focused on the practicalities of helping you right now average Joe Schmo figure out how to get some result in your life that's what this help help movement is about positive psychology is more about the science right because these positive psychologists they actually want to know you know what is the truth what is the truth about how to be happier what is the truth about how to manage your emotions you know is it is it better to use one technique or another technique can we prove that objectively through studies and research so doing that they're coming at it from that perspective self-help is not about that self-help is not as pedantic it's not worried about proving some sort of cause it's not even worried about my covering the truth self-help is worried about okay I am where I am right now I don't have a lot of money I have horrible health I have miserable relationships I'm not happy what do I do to get myself out of this rut and get me the kind of life that I want what are the proven the proven methods out there they're not proven by scientific research or studies they've just been proven kind of in popular culture or they've been proven personally and that is enough so that is kind of the perspective that self-help is coming from I actually think that self-help is is amazing and that it's in many ways more powerful you might think that well it's better to approach it's better to approach from the scientific perspective because it's more rigorous there's more research being done there's more scientific actually I think that if you what you want is you want result in your life which is probably what you're what you really care about right is how to improve your relationship it's how to get more money it's how to actually feel better if you actually want that then I would say the self-help movement is more of what you should be coming at it from because it's much more practical it doesn't worry about the pedantic or approving anything it looks at all the different things throughout history that have worked by various individuals and it kind of it finds the common threads between all that and then you can find that in a book self-help book here self-help book there there are hundreds of amazing cell phone books out there actually self-help dates back I mean we can date it back hundreds of years but even thousands of years to old-school philosophies like Buddhism and stoicism and various Greek and Roman philosophies and in Eastern philosophies and even Middle Eastern philosophies so there's there's lots of ideas there especially from ancient times because people were really concerned back then not so much about the science of being happy they were concerned about how do I be happy how do I be fulfilled how do I be successful to them it was kind of a life and death situation you know they had worried about their survival and some of them were interested in how to be happy actually how to feel it and so self-help has a long history that I can't go into here but right now especially over the last hundred years and even the last 50 years self-help has just exploded because well because because it works because people need to understand their psychology in order to improve their life circumstances and that's what actualised org is about so that's it I'm gonna wrap it up here on positive psychology I hope that gave you better understanding of what positive psychology is and how it's different from old school psychology I hope it also peaked your interest in curiosity not just on an intellectual level in positive psychology but on a practical level and if it did then what I want you to do is follow along with me because actualized org is really built on the ideas of positive psychology and it's built on the ideas and really the ideal that Abraham Maslow espoused in in 1950 when he talked about self-actualization for me that is what life is about if you want to create an amazing life if you want to feel awesome if you want to have the kind of success you want to have you want to feel excitement you need to start to master yourself master your own psychology when you master your own psychology then the whole world opens up to you you will be amazed at what can happen and you don't need scientific theories and research experiments to prove that to you it has been very well proven just through individuals who go out there and do it and then bring out their findings to us through self-help and I've processed about $100,000 worth of self-help material from seminars to books to audio products to DVD products over the last few years and I'm continuing on that journey and I want to bring all that goodness you there's so much depth here you can transform your entire life in any aspect that you want by studying this stuff so this is amazing so that's why I'm excited about it anyways I'm gonna wrap it up here go ahead and like this and share this if you do that's why I released this content for free subscribe and I'm also going to refer you to actualized org where you can subscribe to my new letter it's free no strings attached and there you'll get some amazing exclusive bonuses that are not available anywhere else like free video series live coaching opportunities with myself for free so check that out and of course follow along follow along with this information because I have your attention right now but I know that I can also easily lose it and the amount of content that I'm going to bring to you the amount of amazing tips techniques and just strategies are gonna blow your mind if you just apply them if you follow along and you apply this stuff diligently your life is gonna be transformed