What Is Positive Psychology?

Take our Optimism Test

Find a therapist near me

Acceptance is the willingness to openly experience thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and life events.

Avoidance is an unwillingness to remain in contact with painful thoughts and emotions.

Accepting your emotions gives you the power to create change.

First, the social distancing of the pandemic. Now, increased social disconnection and distrust. Economically, a system in which the distance between haves and have-nots has widened to untenable proportions: in the 29 years from 1989 to 2018, CEOs went from earning 58 times as much as the average employee’s salary to 278 times their salary.

Politically, things are no better. Ruthless, narcissistic politicians spewing divisive rhetoric are abetted by a technology industry that profits from fomenting our discord. The Black Eyed Peas refrain Where is the Love? seems as good as any to describe the world we now occupy and are leaving to our children.

What can you do in the face of these formidable obstacles to living a meaningful life with your fellow citizens of this world?

“What?!!” Are you kidding?”

About to read no further? Meet Bill.

Bill was happily married in his comfortable suburban home in the Midwest with his wife and two children when the Vietnam War (called the “American War”........

© Psychology Today