What makes life worth living?

Do you have a fear about anything that might occur today?

Are you significantly worried about future events?

What makes you feel fully alive, competent, and creative? 

Is it any less worthwhile to ask the third question? 

Researchers who study positive psychology believe understanding what makes life worth living is of equal importance to studies of disorders and mental illness. In fact, they believe that studying the conditions and processes that contribute to our thriving will also give us further insight into disorders and mental illness.  We know much more about how negative experiences lead to illness than how positive emotions promote health.  

Critics of the study of positive psychology suggest that positive psychology encourages us to see the world unrealistically, through rose colored glasses.  But positive psychology isn’t about denying the negative aspects of life nor does it imply that the study of disorders and illnesses is negative.  

I see positive psychology as an effort to study the full realm of being human. Understanding resilience, strength and growth is the underpinning for my Enlightened CoParenting program which is the result of researching and learning about how children flourish in  2 home families. Why wait for children to show symptoms of anxiety before taking action to promote their well-being?

About seven years ago, I studied how children who grew up with a parent with mental illness went on to experience leaving home when they became adults. The study included individuals across genders, socioeconomic levels, and other factors that connoted diversity in the sample. One characteristic amongst the sample of individuals who went on to thrive as young adults was their ability to make meaning of the challenges of their experiences of parental mental illness. Some went on to help others in similar situations while others became very intentional about their parenting and to breaking a cycle of dysfunction. They utilized what they learned through extremely challenging circumstances, such as growing up in foster care and parental suicide, to make life better for themselves and others in the present, in their families, and in their communities.

Other areas of study in positive psychology include understanding of how work settings support the greatest satisfaction amongst workers, what policies promote social engagement, the relationship between positive emotions and physical health, how values and goals affect the impact of things that happen in our environments, how wisdom develops, how changes in the environment impact relationships, the origins of giftedness and how to nurture gifted children, does happiness in small doses accumulate to create satisfaction with life overall. It also includes the study of neurobiology. Questions in this area include the question of whether positive traits like optimism may be inherited in ways similar to the way the disposition to depression may be? 

One of my favorite applications of this way of viewing the world is to consider what we intuitively know to be true about stress. We know that when we imagine a negative series of events we create stress for ourselves, even if the series of events is not likely to occur.  I believe we can similarly use our imaginations to create positive change and to connect with our resilience, joy, love, and power.

Might you be willing to help me out here?

Join the experiment. Notice if using your imagination in positive ways leads to positive change in your life.  Next, notice whether the ability or inability to evoke this change with your imagination impacts how much you use your imagination to create stress.

It would be wonderful if you would share your discoveries with me. It need not be earth 

shattering to have meaning. Curiosity, in and of itself, is powerful!

 Take care, my friend! ❤️

Jodi