Most of the time we don’t have a life jacket for every shock, no parachute for every jump we take into the void, but everything has a outcome, sometimes with a smile, others with a strong unguarded slam. Because even if we don’t have an ointment to heal all the wounds or compass that shows us the best way, sooner or later it will happen: we’ll move with our heads up.
This way of thinking may seem like a premise of positive psychology. One of those who defend the motto “If you want, can you?”, Accompanied by a smiling yellow face. But in fact, it should be noted that this vision is much more than just a meaningless motto. In fact, an evolution can be recognized since Martin Seligman structured his theoretical and scientific bases in the mid-1990s.
- Today’s positive psychology lives a second wave that values a key aspect: the ability to transform.
- To do so you have to understand how complex emotional experiences are.
- Where it is not always easy to separate the positive from the negative.
- Overcoming all adversity.
- You have to know how to live with this whirlwind of feelings.
- Often strained.
- But that are also complementary and integral to a balance that is effectively self-regulating.
Your problem can be solved if you travel by plane: go far, change air, place, skin, family environments, but it may not be that, you may have to say out loud what you’ve been holding out for so long. Speak plainly and finish this phase of your life with a smile or door closure, however, you may already have what you need and just need to do it.
Whatever your personal situation, your black hole or your difficulty, you only need to know one thing: everything has a way out, as long as you focus on yours and not the maze of the problem. Because believe it or not, it’s something most of us do, so when adversity visits us and traps us in their conspiracy of unforeseen events and injustices, we often focus only on what hurts us, what outrages us, what threatens us. face to face with fear, but we never look at it.
Every problem has a border, and crossing it will allow us to breathe, remove that feeling of suffocation. And then imagine an evacuation plan. But are we doing it?The truth is that many times we do not and pay a lot of money on several occasions, because adversity paralyzes and we are not used to dealing with negative emotions, we do not tolerate them. Positive psychology, in this second wave that lives today, emphasizes the importance of not depleting our resources by placing them in a capsule, if we can accept negative emotions rather than combat them, we will move forward.
In recent years, it is not only positive psychology that has experienced an interesting breakthrough, we have more and more books and articles that focus on the so-called psychology of post-traumatic growth, a current that holds that, although there is an outlet for everything, we will not let this tunnel be the same. Each process involves change, and each change means losses and additions, in short, transformations.
The lessons on adversity tell us that we may lose some of our innocence. Our ability to trust, our spontaneity of the past? We will take off from some things in this initial process and get hurt, of that there is no doubt, but as the poet and architect Joan Margarit says, an injury is also a place to live, because an unprecedented creative The force arises from us, we find resources that we did not know we had and we also created a more satisfactory vision of ourselves.
Everything comes out if we draw up an evacuation plan, everything has a way out if we realize that we will no longer be the same: we will be stronger, understand this, turn it into our principles, it will certainly help us in this regard. of life in which we must first understand that no one is foreign or safe from adversity and, secondly, that we all have the potential to implement so-called post-traumatic growth.
Martin Seligman himself reminds us of this in his work on 9/11. One thing I saw in many of the people who survived the terrorist attack was their ability to recover. More difficult events can often serve as catalysts for more positive change. humbler gaze, greater temperance, psychological resistance, acceptance of our own vulnerability and a more integral and precious philosophy of life.
In conclusion, a person’s strength lies not in his ability to resist certain things, our strength is in our indomitable will to transform us, to rebuild us again and again.