TEDTalks: Why is Psychology Good?

I just watched a TEDTalks video from 2004 with Martin Seligman. It dealt with the history of psychology and how the old way of improving people’s lives was to remove bad things (or help people deal with bad things). In the last few years psychologists have tried to instead find ways to inject good things. This is known as Positive Psychology.

They first had to develop a definition of a “happy” life. A happy life can be described as a life fueled by either pleasure, engagement, meaning or some mix of the three. I’ll leave you watch it for the full info, but I really identified with the concept of flow which is a major component of the ‘life of engagement.’ It means that when doing your work or play activities, time stands still for you. If work flies by and you are unaware of just pumping out 8 hours, you have encountered this.

You can find this video here.