APPLICATIONS OF POSITIVE

PSYCHOLOGY
DR ANURADHA SHARMA
• Benefits of Positive Psychology in the Workplace
• Positive psychology can be used to increase
happiness and satisfaction within the workforce.
• We spend (on average) half of our waking hours at
work, and many business leaders are starting to
acknowledge that instilling these psychological
techniques in the workplace is imperative. Not only
might staff be more cordial and engaged in the
space, but staff productivity may also increase.
• to foster positivity and improve:
• Performance
• Motivation
• Engagement
• Conflict Resolution Skills
• Original Thinking
• Positive Emotions
• People thrive when they are happier. When mood becomes brighter, we set
higher goals and persist longer towards them. We experience less stress and
fatigue and show better team cooperation and problem-solving.
• Brain scans show that when subjects are instructed to list their gratitudes daily,
there is increased activity in the part of the brain associated with happiness. Of
course, it is difficult to force feelings of happiness, but when we cultivate a
‘grateful mindset,’ happiness sometimes comes along for the ride.
• Some organizations have adopted these ideas in innovative ways. For example,
by listing ‘appreciations’ as a standing agenda item at the beginning of staff
meetings, individuals can nominate someone or something for which they are
grateful. This culture of gratitude can also decrease stress levels, by pausing
the rushed reality of work and pausing to give thanks.
• Connect
• Science shows us the greatest way to influence our happiness is
to invest in our relationships.
• Evolution has wired us to connect with others for survival. These
connections have the power to affect how we feel. According to
research on happiness, our moods are literally contagious. This
happens because of mirror neurons in our brains.
• If our colleague starts celebrating next to us, the cells in our own
brain that would fire when we are engaged in similar behavior
light up. These mirror neurons, evolutionarily, have helped us
understand other’s feelings and intentions.
• Engage
• The formula for building staff engagement is to
maximize the extent to which people are using
and applying their strengths.
• Most of us strive to better ourselves in one way
or another, and yet are often stuck in our
failings, focusing on trying to “fix” parts of
ourselves, and neglecting those parts of us that
are flourishing.
• Create Meaning
• In this context, meaning refers to a purposeful
existence. In the work environment, when there is a
shared sense of purpose, staff are more likely to feel
satisfied with their job.
• Organizational psychologist and author Adam Grant
devised an innovative experiment into team
productivity. His three New York Times bestselling
books have shaped organizations around the world.
• Accomplish
• Accomplishment is often the result of realistic goals that are supported by
specific actions. Having accomplishments at work is critical to push
ourselves to thrive and flourish.
• Leaders can build achievement in their people by involving a person’s
strengths in future discussions about organizational goals. For example,
asking strengths-based questions can help staff feel respected and valued.
• These questions include:
• Tell me about a previous achievement of which you are genuinely proud. It
may or may not be work related. A time when you really outdid yourself?
• Which top strengths do you think helped you achieve this impressive
outcome? Which talents did you demonstrate at the time? (The VIA is
useful here).
• Push Beyond Your Goals
• Setting goals at an individual, team and organizational level is key for
productivity and happiness. But there is no point in setting goals
without a way to measure them, or minimally, develop specific action
items to guide staff to their success.
• Goals can provide us with an intrinsic sense of engagement, motivation,
and connection. In other words, meeting our goals might help us
achieve happiness, but we cannot rely on goal-achievement alone.
• A more sustainable source of happiness is enjoying each step that
propels you towards the finish line. Research shows that while goal
achievement creates an initial boost in positivity, the effects do not last
long. The trick lies in learning to enjoy each aspect of the journey
towards your goals.
• Reward Yourself
• Our ability to celebrate our own accomplishments, as
well as those of our colleagues, is another important
element for enjoying and remaining at any workplace.
• Rewards activate the pleasure pathways in our brain,
even when they are self-induced.
• Effective rewards do not have to be anything big or
expensive or even financial but can be as simple as
taking a break, going for a short walk, or enjoying a
snack.
• PERMA-theory, and it seems to make a lot of
sense applied to the workplace.  The acronym
stands for five elements that can help people
reach a state of happiness and fulfillment: (P)
Positive Emotions, (E) Engagement, (R)
Relationships, (M) Meaning and Purpose, and
(A) Accomplishments.
• Positive Emotions
• Positive emotions means having the ability to actively focus on
the positive.  It reminds me of the Optimist Club back in high
school.  It’s that “glass is half full” kind of outlook in daily
situations.
• In my opinion, there’s no reason a work environment needs to
be a negative place.  Are employees supporting each other in
positive ways?  Is the leadership positive? When a tough
situation occurs, it is handled with an optimistic attitude or a
stressful one?  Are there feelings of excitement throughout the
day? Does your manager tell you the beatings will continue until
morale is improved?
• Engagement 
• Engagement means how interested people are in the activities at
hand.  Are employees actively interested or just doing their jobs
because they “have to”?  In other words, do jobs match up with
employees’ personal interests?  A highly engaged employee should
feel absorbed, enthusiastic, and fully immersed in the task at hand.
• Relationships
• Positive psychologist Dr. Christopher Peterson puts it simply, “other
people matter.”  Work relationships can fuel employees’
happiness.  A company which fosters and supports employee
bonding and relationships will see benefits.  A workplace culture
should be one of connection instead of isolation.
• Meaning
• Seligman describes meaning as the question “why?”  Why
is someone doing this type of work?  Do they feel that
they serve a greater purpose? If employees believe their
work is meaningful, they will be happier with the work.
• Accomplishments
• Are there things on a daily, monthly, or yearly basis that
employees are accomplishing?  Something to take pride in,
mention to others, put on a resume?  Feeling like forward
progress is made towards a goal can increase happiness.
• Positive psychology at work
• How to apply positive psychology in the
workplace? For many, their workplace is a
place of torture. It’s that terrible place that
you can’t escape because you need a salary to
support your family. However, even if it is not
the most desirable place in the world, it is
possible to make it a less hostile place.
• 1. Practice gratitude
• As in the positive psychology exercise proposed above, you can
also practice gratitude at work. Think of a person who has done
something to us that we really appreciate. Write a letter and read
it aloud giving thanks. This exercise gives you a sense of well-
being while strengthening your relationship with that person.
• 2. Take perspective on your tasks
• If we give our work meaning beyond the obligation to do so, it is
possible to increase our levels of happiness and satisfaction. Try
to visualize how this task contributes to the greater good. Run
away from negativity, because you can
think “this will only make the boss rich” but these thoughts don’t help. Think about
what service you give people, what it’s necessary for and if you can’t find anything,
think about what it gives you (economic security, resources for your children,
knowledge for future projects, etc.).
• 3. Think about the positive aspects of the day
• As we did before, you can think of three positive
things that have happened to you at work. It may be a
“thank you” and a smile from someone, it may have
been a coffee with a friend or a compliment from
someone.
• 4. Spend time with your co-workers
• Make an effort to meet your co-workers, talk to them,
have a coffee or plan activities outside of the workday.
• 5. Use your strengths
• Knowing our strengths and using them daily in
our work increases our happiness and sense of
accomplishment.
• According to Seligman et al.’s 2009 paper, Positive Education is a
response to the gap between what people want for their children
and what schools teach. That is, most parents want their children
to be happy, healthy, and confident, but schools only focus on
achievement, discipline, and academic skills. These are of course
important, but so are positive mental health outcomes.
• To fix this gap, Positive Education is proposed, where schools
teach achievement and accomplishment along with positive
psychology-informed mental health skills. In other words, positive
education wants to bring positive psychology’s goals of
well-being and mental health support for everyone into the
school setting.
• Seligman and other positive psychologists are also
not alone in the belief that schools should aim for
student well-being. For example, philosophers as
far back as Aristotle have considered happiness to
be the end goal of education (Kristjansson, 2012).
• Other people working in education have also
historically been interested in student well-being,
so positive education is not necessarily a
groundbreaking innovation.
• Teachers themselves believe that teaching is “inevitably linked”
with the emotional health and well-being of the students being
taught (Kidger et al., 2010). In fact, Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of
needs even indicates that emotional support may be a sort of
prerequisite to higher-order functions such as learning.
• Recent research has confirmed the same, as offering emotional
support early in a school year can lead to improved instructional
quality later in that school year (Curby et al., 2013). In other
words, positive education is not a focus on mental health
instead of academic achievement but is a focus on mental health
in order to set the stage and give students the opportunity for
academic achievement.
• One way to increase classroom conversation and discussion
in a reading-based class is the QQTP approach (Connor-
Greene, 2005). The QQTP approach refers to assigned daily
response papers entitled “question, quotations, and talking
points”.
• In classes where daily readings are assigned, these response
papers consist of students writing down:
• A question about the day’s reading
• A “compelling or controversial” quotation from the reading
• A brief outline of talking points from the reading the student
can use for discussion
• This approach ensures that students not only read
the previous day’s assigned reading, but that they
are prepared to actively discuss it in class rather
than passively listening to others talk about it.
Student response papers can also be used as
starting points for class discussion if a class is still
being quiet. Students who have used the QQTP
method rated the first and third components (a
question and an outline of talking points) as the
most useful aspects of the method.
• Another way to increase student discussion is
to offer participation credit. Grading based on
participation, however, can be
disadvantageous to students who are more
naturally shy. One solution to this is to offer
group participation credit.
• Another way to increase student discussion is
to offer participation credit. Grading based on
participation, however, can be
disadvantageous to students who are more
naturally shy. One solution to this is to offer
group participation credit.
• Happy Teacher = Happy Class
• Positive education is not just for the sake of the students. One
commenter has argued that not only should student happiness be
the aim of education, but that teacher happiness should also be the
aim of education (Noddings, 2003). This author also claims that
happy teachers will directly lead to happy students, by helping their
students associate education with happiness, as the teachers do.
• Even teachers who believe that student well-being is a crucial part
of teaching can feel burdened if asked to attend to both the
academic and emotional needs of their students. If teachers are
being asked to increase their workload, then steps must be taken to
ensure their happiness as well.
• In other words, both perceiving oneself as
being underpaid and actually making less
money are associated with worse student
outcomes for teachers. These findings indicate
that raising teacher wages would likely lead to
improved emotional outcomes for students.
• Activities For Emotional Learning
• Social and emotional learning are often-overlooked aspects of education.
Emotional learning is important, however, as a “protective vehicle to
prevent problematic youth behaviour and promote mental health and
wellbeing” (Reicher & Matischek-Jauk, 2017).
• Some activities for emotional learning can be drawn from the Maytiv
preschool program for positive psychology education (Shoshani & Slone,
2017):
• Identifying personal sources of happiness
• Expressing gratitude
• Free expression of different feelings in movement, art, speech, and facial
expressions
• Describing happy memories
• Positive Teaching: Moodtrackers And Other Worksheets
• For teachers who are ready to begin implementing positive
education into their classrooms, here are a few worksheets
to get started:
• Daily Mood Chart
• This daily mood chart helps students track their mood
throughout the day (and can be modified to only include the
school day). This simple self-report chart will help students
better understand their mood throughout the day and week.
Teachers can also use it as a group mood chart to track the
class’s engagement levels.
• Three Good Things Worksheet
• This is a worksheet for the Three Good Things
exercise, which asks someone to list three good
things that happened to them every day, and to
reflect on those things. This worksheet contains
space for two weeks of entries and a space for
reflection. After each day, one should reflect on why
the good things happened and how they can change
their behavior (if necessary) to make those good
things happen more often.
• 0 Mindfulness Activities For Kids
• Mindfulness is important in the classroom, because teachers and parents “frequently
ask children to pay attention but give them no instruction as to how to do so”
(Shankland & Rosset, 2017).
• Some mindfulness activities for kids in the classroom include:
• Mindful Bell (Ringing a bell and asking students to listen until they can’t hear the bell
anymore, as a way to quiet down a classroom)
• Brief Body Scan – FOFBOC (Feet On Floor, Bum On Chair, where students start by
focusing on the feeling of their feet on the floor, then working up their focus to their
weight on the chair)
• Mindful Breathing – 7/11 (Inhaling for 7 seconds/counts, exhaling for 11
seconds/counts)
• Caring Mindfulness (Students are asked to think about their own desire to be happy,
then their classmates’ desires to be happy, and then students are asked to wish for
their classmates to be happy)
• ther activities to promote mindfulness in kids in the classroom
include (Black & Fernando, 2014):
• Mindful Bodies and Listening (Kids simply sit still in a relaxed
posture)
• Heartfulness: Generosity (Students discuss and visualize ways to be
generous)
• Mindful Seeing (Carefully observing a single object for a period of
time)
• Slow Motion (With awareness, slowly moving arms and slowly
standing from a seated position)
• Mindful Walking
• Mindful Eating
• 0+ Positive Psychology Exercises For Teens
• Some positive psychology exercises which can be used for teenagers in the classroom
include (Shankland & Rosset, 2017; Seligman et al., 2009):
• Identifying Strengths (Asking students to think about someone they admire, then asking
them why they admire that person, in other words, what their strengths are)
• Strengths 360° (Having students ask friends, teachers, parents, and others to identify the
student’s strengths)
Cultivating Strengths (Having students identify their top strengths, then find new ways to
use one of those strengths daily in the classroom)
• Secret Strength Spotting (Having students secretly observe another classmate in the
classroom for a week, and writing down strengths they observe during this time)
• Keeping a Gratitude Journal
• Gratitude Letter (Having students write a letter to someone they are grateful for)
• Gratitude Graph (Students are asked to write one or more things they feel grateful for on
individual sticky notes, these notes are then plotted on a classroom graph with categories
for people, places, events, etc.)
• Gratitude Box (Students are asked to write things they feel grateful for on strips of
paper and drop those pieces of paper into a box, then all the strips are read aloud
at the end of the week)
• Cooperative Learning Groups (Splitting up the class into small groups to work on a
specific task or topic, then teach that topic to the other small groups in the class)
• Active Constructive Responding (Having students practice active, as opposed to
passive, and constructive. as opposed to destructive, responses)
• Supportive Sticky Notes (Having students write on a sticky note something they
appreciate about a classmate, then sticking that note somewhere that the
classmate will see it, such as on their locker or desk)
• Secret Acts of Kindness (Students are secretly assigned partners, then asked to be
more caring to that person for a period of time)
• Three Good Things (Students are asked to write three good things that happened
to them each day for a week, then reflect on why each good thing happened and
how they can cause it to happen more)
• Some of the earliest applications of psychology were
in education. Similarly, some of the most obvious
applications of positive psychology are in education.
Positive education is not necessarily a completely
new idea, but it is a reaffirmation of what parents
and education advocates believe should be the end
goal of education: student happiness. If thinkers as
far back as Aristotle have believed that happiness
should be the main aim of education, positive
education is a necessary movement.
• Indeed, research shows that children who are happy and
emotionally supported have better emotional and
academic outcomes. For that reason alone, schools
should implement positive psychology’s teachings into
their classrooms. While implementing these teachings,
however, schools also must take care not to overburden
their teachers. Research shows that teacher well-being
modifies the emotional and academic outcomes of their
students, so teacher happiness, as well as student
happiness, should be the main goal of positive
education.