2021-10-27

?Chapter 2 of "The Science of Happiness"?After reading

1. Facts: I learned: Martin Seligman, the father of positive psychology, in "Sustained Happiness" A book states that positive psychology studies not happiness, but a comprehensive and flourishing life (well-being or flooding). It has five pillars: positive emotions, investment, interpersonal relationships, meaning and achievement, English abbreviation for PERMA.

Character Strengths and Virtues: Through research, Seligman and Peterson summarized six virtues that are valued by all mankind, and twenty-four character strengths that constitute these virtues.

Strengths education: Teachers consciously and systematically discover their own talents at work, develop and apply their own strengths, and help students through continuous learning, improving teaching methods, designing and implementing lesson plans, and creating activities Discover your talents during the learning process, develop and apply your strengths in order to acquire knowledge, acquire study skills, develop thinking and problem-solving skills, and achieve excellence in an educational environment.

Developmental thinking: refers to a person's belief that his or her basic characteristics, such as character, talent, wisdom, and talent, can be continuously developed through perseverance, determination, and hard work.

2. Feelings: I realize the importance of advantageous education now. When educating children, we should not only see the shortcomings, but praise the children's advantages more so that his narcissism can be satisfied. Then encourage them to realize their innate potential and become better versions of themselves.

3. Findings: What surprises me is: as the book says, advantages can be strengthened through practice. For the advantages we have discovered, we should strengthen them through the application of ?; for those who have no advantages, Character and ability can be strengthened by more training.

4. Future: What I plan to do: formulate a plan to strengthen and explore my own strengths and implement it according to the plan.

Excerpts from beautiful passages in the article

? Only a few people in our lives suffer from mental illnesses that require psychiatrists to diagnose them through DSM. Most people just have some shortcomings, such as Laziness, vanity, or some minor psychological problems, such as being easily nervous and thinking negatively, do not require psychiatrists to use the DSM for analysis. On the contrary, everyone has advantages - most ordinary people have many advantages, and those few people with serious psychological problems or even mental illness actually have shining points. However, there is a lack of systematic research on human advantages in the field of psychology.

This creates a very negative situation: Psychology can make relatively accurate judgments about what kind of mental illness and psychological problems you may have, and can provide treatment plans or treatments that have certain effects. Suggestions, but cannot form scientific, systematic and effective opinions on what strengths and characters you may have. From another perspective, society has a growing need for a science of human merit, character, and virtue. Parents hope that schools can cultivate good character in their children, companies hope to recruit employees with outstanding merits, and society relies on the continuous improvement of the moral level of all members to achieve harmony and prosperity. Research on human shortcomings, mental illness, and psychological problems is of course essential, and these are also contributions to humanity that the psychology community can be proud of, but currently more people need to know how to use scientific methods to discover, cultivate, and develop character strengths. and virtue. ?

? It is precisely because character strengths and virtues are so important that after launching the modern positive psychology movement, Seligman obtained the support of the Mayerson Foundation and launched a The study of character strengths and virtues in humans. He drew on the essence of the DSM's success, which is that precise definition is the first step in solving a problem. If a patient comes to a psychiatrist's office and the psychiatrist cannot determine what disease he has, treatment will be difficult. Similarly, if we want to discover a person's strengths, we must first find out what his strengths are before we can help him make better use of them

?The main standards of character strengths and virtues in the book are as follows :1. Strengths can help yourself and others grow and make life better. An advantage must help people realize themselves, not just solve real problems in life. This is also the difference between positive psychology's classification of character strengths and virtues and those commonly used in the corporate world, that is, character strengths and virtues are the essence of being human.

2. Strengths can bring practical benefits. For example, leadership allows you to lead a team better, integrity makes you loved by others, social intelligence allows you to get along with others better, tenacity allows you to complete difficult tasks, and creativity It allows you to create works that others have not thought of, but the value of the advantages does not need to be measured by actual benefits. Even if some advantages have no obvious practical benefits, for example, humility may cause you to lose opportunities, and forgiveness may allow others to take advantage of you, the advantages themselves are valuable, and the criteria for their selection are not actual results, but society, Does the civilization value them morally (these advantages will ultimately bring benefits in the long run, such as humility making people more willing to cooperate with you and forgiveness opening more doors of opportunity for you).

3. One person's strengths do not hinder others, but rather inspire and promote their progress. In other words, when you use your strengths, others will not envy you but respect you. Therefore, character strengths and virtues generally appear as win-win situations.

4． The opposite of an advantage should be a bad character. For example, the opposite of kindness is coldness, and the opposite of integrity is meanness. Positive advantages are respected by society, while negative bad characters are rejected and devalued by society. If there is a trait whose opposite is not a bad character, it cannot be called a character strength. For example, flexibility is a strength and can benefit your career, but its opposite—tenacity and persistence—are also strengths, so flexibility cannot be a character strength.

5. Strengths are psychological traits that are stable in a person and will appear in different situations. For example, just because you didn't lie once in a while doesn't mean you are upright; if you forgive someone once in a while, it doesn't mean you have the virtue of forgiveness.

In addition, since Peterson and Seligman summarized the character strengths and virtues universally possessed by human beings after examining all mainstream civilizations in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad, every character strength must be It is universal, that is, it is respected in any culture. This standard is not as unattainable as we think. All nations and cultures basically value the same moral character. The six virtues and twenty-four character strengths studied by positive psychology can be found in every civilization in the world. .

The benevolence, righteousness, etiquette, wisdom, and trustworthiness advocated by Chinese Confucianism generally correspond to humanity, courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice (some of the qualities of justice and courage correspond to trustworthiness and righteousness) The relationship is not clear-cut, for example, civic spirit is closer to righteousness, while integrity has an element of faith). As for transcendence, although Confucianism does not pay much attention to it on the surface ("If you don't know life, how can you know death"), the other two very important schools in the Chinese cultural tradition - Taoism and Buddhism - both attach great importance to "transcendence". ", and Confucianism still needs to transcend when it comes to self-cultivation to the most profound level.

Seligman also pointed out in the book "Authentic Happiness" that advantages must be cultivated. If a trait is mainly determined by innate factors, it can only be called a talent, not an advantage. All these twenty-four character strengths should be something that people can improve through acquired efforts. Anyone can improve his or her advantages as long as he is willing to put in the effort and take the right approach.

When it comes to advantages, many people may think that they are born with certain advantages and do not need special practice; others may feel that they are born without advantages in certain aspects, so they become discouraged. In fact, everyone cannot walk or even crawl when they are born. However, with continuous practice, we gradually learn how to stand, walk, and even run. Just like other skills, we can strengthen our strengths through practice, and strengths are not static. Strengths will be strengthened if they are consistently used in daily life. Similarly, if a character or ability that is not currently an advantage is specifically trained, this character or ability will be strengthened and even developed into a new advantage. ?Psychologist Carol Dweck calls this way of thinking that believes that "strengths can be continuously strengthened through practice" a "growth mindset", and calls another way of thinking that "strengths cannot be strengthened through practice" a "growth mindset". The idea that you can't change is called a "fixed mindset." Dweck found through research that developmental thinking can help improve learning engagement, academic performance, interpersonal relationships, as well as future work achievements and life satisfaction. Therefore, it is very beneficial to look at character strengths with developmental thinking.

In his inaugural address as president of the American Psychological Association, Seligman formally proposed positive psychology - a discipline that studies happiness, meaning, achievement, love, justice and other beautiful psychology and character. science. All of this actually originated from a child's display of his own character strengths and virtues. It was she who made her father, a psychologist, realize that character strengths and virtues already exist in every child's heart. When we educate our children, We can't just focus on their shortcomings and let them modify their behavior. More importantly, we should focus on their strengths so that they can develop their innate potential and grow into their true selves. Only this kind of life can bring them Happiness enables them to make the greatest contribution to society.

What is strengths education

? American scholar E. C. Anderson defines strengths education as a new type of educational concept that requires teachers to consciously develop and apply themselves in their work. Take advantage of continuous learning, improve teaching standards, design and implement lesson plans, and create activities to help students discover their talents in the learning process, develop and apply their strengths to learn knowledge, acquire learning skills, and develop thinking and questions Solve skills and ultimately achieve excellent results.