What Is Positive Psychology? And how it's PERMAH model can help you live a better life

Since I became a coach, I’ve been rediscovering the lessons that psychology can teach us about how to live a good life. I first studied psychology almost 30 years ago, but I’m finding that the discipline has moved on considerably since I left university. 

Psychology has been around for over 150 years. For most of that time it has focussed predominantly on the study of psychological disorders, of understanding what might go wrong with people. It’s central question was - how can we help people struggling, clinically depressed, had anxiety, or clinical disorders. And it’s achieved fantastic things in that arena.

Positive psychology is a branch of psychology that emerged a few decades ago. Its official ‘birth’ is dated to 1998, when Dr Martin Seligman (the ‘father of positive psychology’) chose it as the theme of his presidency of the American Psychological Association. In fact, that was the same year I began my undergraduate degree, although it was a little too early to feature on my course syllabus.  

So, I’ve been learning about it for the first time this year. And it’s been an absolute delight. Because positive psychology isn’t about studying what’s wrong with people, it's about studying what’s right with them. 

Positive psychology identifies those people who are flourishing, happy, bouncy, full of energy (you’ll know the type, even if you don’t see yourself in that category… yet). One of the UK’s leading positive psychologists, Dr Andy Cope (aka Dr Happy), calls these people the 2%-ers. Why? Because they’ve been found to make up only 2% of the population. 

The rest of us are mostly either ‘perfectly fine’ or in a bit of a low-level negativity zone that the researchers call ‘languishing’. But the good news for us is that because of the brain’s fantastic ability for neuroplasticity, and because most of what determines whether we’re in the 2% is down to learned behaviour, it means we have the capacity to become 2%-ers. 

I’ll say that again. We have the possibility to flourish, to be happy, bouncy and full of energy. 

Positive psychologists have been studying what makes those 2%-ers so happy. How do they think? What habits do they have? How do they relate to other people? They’ve coded what they’ve learned into a framework called PERMAH meaning we can learn from the 2%-ers and adopt their ways into our own lives. 

So, here’s PERMAH:

Positive emotion (dialling up the good emotions, acknowledging the tricky ones, without them taking over)

Engagement (playing to your strengths, finding ways to get ‘in the zone’)

Relationships (prioritising creating and sustaining deep, meaningful, in person relationships)

Meaning (finding your calling, having purpose, understanding your ‘why’)

Accomplishment (achieving stretching goals)

Health (taking good care of your physical health - sleeping, eating, moving)

Working on these elements can make the difference between making changes, tinkering around on the edges of your life, versus making real transformation. 

Here are some questions to reflect on. 

💛Positive Emotion What has brought me genuine joy, gratitude or energy recently, and how can I create more space for those moments?

💛Engagement When do I become so absorbed in what I'm doing that I lose track of time, and what does that tell me about the work or activities that suit me best?

💛Relationships Who are my 12-15 most important relationships with and am I investing enough time in each of them?

💛Meaning What am I contributing that's bigger than my to-do list, and does the way I'm spending my time reflect what matters most to me?

💛 Accomplishment What big goals am I working towards and are they sufficiently ambitious?

💛Health How well am I looking after my physical wellbeing, and what small commitment could make to improve my quality of sleep, diet or movement?

Your answers to each of these questions might give you some clues about where to start to use positive psychology to help you transform your life. If you want to explore any of these areas in more detail then I’d love to have a chat about how coaching can help you achieve transformational change like this. Just drop me a line on liv@yellowbenchcoaching.com, or use the link here on my website to arrange a 30 minute chat. 

And, if you’re interested to learn more about positive psychology, then I recommend starting with a super-fun book called “The Art of Being Brilliant” by Dr Andy Cope & Andy Whittaker. If you want to go deeper, try “Flourish” by Martin Seligman.