This week Big Ideas 

on ABC1  aired a talk given by Dr Martin Seligman on 

Positive Psychology.

Seligman is Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and has been 'Thinker in Residence' at Adelaide University.

The talk was taped at the Happiness and Its Causes Convention in Sydney March 2012, in a session entitled 'Flourishing: A Visionary Understanding of Happiness and Well Being'.

Renowned for his work on depression, optimism and pessimism Seligman’s theory of ‘learned helplessness’ has developed into one of the most influential psychological theories of the last 30 years crediting him as the father of positive psychology.
In this talk he outlines his new theory of well being that goes by the acronym of PERMA.

Lying on the couch with cotton wool and drops in one ear I took notes in my smart phone which I later emailed to myself and today cut and paste in a document for this blog.  My rough notes as such about PERMA are that:

P represents Positive emotion or overall happiness achievement. It considers depression symptoms, assesses enduring happiness, and measures positive and negative affects.

E represents Engagement focussing on 24 character strengths, appreciation about the past, strength of perseverance, optimism about the future, forgiveness, and work-life satisfaction.

R stands for positive Relationships addressing attachment and your tendency to support, help and understand other people.

M is for Meaning and measures your attachment style. It also measures your tendency to support, help, and understand other people and attributed meaningfulness in your life. Belonging to and serving something bigger than yourself more often than not leads to a greater sense of meaning or purpose. 

A equals Accomplishment or achievement, determined through amongst other things, self-discipline.

Each is measurable, each is teachable. Overall the goal of positive psychology is to increase not just human happiness, but human flourishing.

Incidentally, I found the beautiful eye catching sign above in Flickr which is where ABC Open producers prowl looking for appropriate images to cover our blogs. It is also where many of our contributors add their images to participate in various ABC Open projects.

Yesterday we launched a new project called Snapped: Signs. I hope that you too can contribute to our new project, the rules are simple and the very act of participating in something that is bigger than you (Meaning) is sure to bring you at the very least a few moments of happiness.