POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Positive psychologists seek to 'find and nurture  genius and talent' and to make 'normal life more fulfilling', rather than merely treating mental illness.

Examples

Dyslexia definition-

Dyslexia is a very broad term defining a learning disability that impairs a person's fluency or comprehension accuracy in being able to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, processing speed, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, language skills/verbal comprehension, and/or rapid naming.

This definition contains the elements of the condition that are the individual's weaknesses. This can have a long term, dramatic effect on a child and they can carry feelings of inadequacy around with them for the rest of their lives.  Rather than concentrating on the negatives, positive psychologists believe that you should always focus on the individual's strengths. Instead of dwelling on the negatives, encouragement of the person's strengths is required for their self esteem. For example, Dyslexics often have many of these qualities:

• Perception: the ability to alter and create perceptions;
• Highly aware of the environment;
• Highly curious;
• Great intuition and insightful;
• Thinking and perceiving multi-dimensionally (using all the senses);
• A lively imagination;
• Can experience thought as reality;
• Creativity;
• Easy adoption of change;
• Holistic, see the big picture, don’t get lost in details, get to the important aspects;
• See patterns, connections, and similarities very easy;
• Concentration;
• Can be very driven, ambitious and persistent;
• Superior reasoning;
• Capable of seeing things differently than others;
• Love for complexity;
• Simultaneous multiple thought processing;
• Not following the crowd;
• The ability of visual, spatial and lateral thinking.

and go on to work in areas such as:

• Science/research
• Psychology
• Teaching
• Manager in people-relate occupations
• Businesspeople in general
• Marketing and sales
• Interior/Garden/mode design
• Culinary arts
• Woodworking
• Carpentry
• Artiste
• Painter/sculptor
• Actor
• Graphic art
• Architecture
• Designer
• Mechanics
• Engineering
• Photography
• Music
• Athletics
• Computing
• Software design
• Electronics

Another short example is to not make people suffering from depression less depressed in treatment, but to help them find something to make them happy.