Mind Moves:My motorcycle mechanic told me he was reading a book on "positive thinking" that had changed his life. He was practising the habit of expecting good things to happen and discovering, much to his delight, that they did. The same day, an invitation to speak to a group about mental health came with a fervent plea that I would focus on "positive thinking and wellbeing," writes Tony Bates
The growing attraction to "positive" psychology has emerged from a recognition that our 20th century map of the mind is incomplete. The strength of traditional psychotherapies has been to describe complex emotional problems that stop people from living out their lives with some peace of mind.
In different ways, these therapies provide methods to help people become free from whatever holds them in bondage to their past. But our psychological insights have fallen short in revealing how the healthy mind works.
The excitement generated by the positive psychology movement is that it identifies those thinking patterns and behaviours that ordinary people can practise to heal themselves and deal with the challenges and stresses they face on a daily basis.
Furthermore, these same attitudes and behaviours have been shown to have a direct influence on the quality of our physical health and on our capacity to heal and recover from illness.
My mechanic was certainly onto something when he discovered an intimate connection between his attitude towards life and his subsequent experience of life. The beliefs and thoughts we nurture in the quiet of our minds have a profound impact on the quality of our lives.
Ultimately, the life we live becomes an external expression of these beliefs. But super-imposing on our minds a litany of "positive thoughts" - eg "I'm fantastic", "Today is going to be brilliant", "I'm going to be really successful in my work" - is unlikely to carry us very far. Inevitably, we will hit a crisis and find they are too thin to carry us through.
We can't feel good all the time and while it may sound like nirvana, we need to ask ourselves, would we really want to? Suffering is an inevitable part of the human condition, it comes as part of the package, a birthright, and like everything that has survived the machine that is human evolution, it too serves a function.
If we never suffered, we'd never learn to cope with the inevitable difficulties life throws up. It is our struggles that allow us to develop a sense of identity and discover what matters most to us in life.
It is in learning to weather the storms that we really live and grow. Memories of successes in the face of adversity, rather than those balmy days when we sail through life, are ultimately those which we cherish the most.
True "positive" thinking patterns that lead to mental health are those that empower us to engage with adversity knowing we can grow through it. Wellbeing is achieved every time we cope with adversity and appreciate in a deeper way the essential goodness and resilience that lies at the core of our humanity.
What are some of the key attitudes that promote resilience and wellbeing?
Philosophy, literature and all the major religions have articulated these in their own way. Psychological research has found empirical evidence to support many of the insights they have proposed.
An "openness to life experience" has been rated number one in quite a number of studies. Simply put, this means we stop insisting that things should be the way we want them to be and instead become responsive and sensitive to life as it actually is.
Another quality that disposes us towards wellbeing is that we don't take setbacks so personally. It's not always our fault. Things go wrong and when they do it's more helpful to think of negative events in terms of temporary setbacks that can be remedied, rather than a sign of some personal inadequacy that will curse the rest of our life.
My son made it across 23 countries to Mongolia in an 18-year-old Starlet last summer. When I asked him what got him there he said it was his belief "that every problem had a solution".
The trip wasn't about his personal success or failure, it was about meeting each setback as an opportunity to find some new creative solution.
Such qualities need to be nurtured both in ourselves and in each other over time. Being attentive on a daily basis to how we succumb to the trap of falling into self-blame, giving up too easily and losing faith in ourselves is as much a part of any mental health regime as "positive" thinking.
Psychological health is a lot more than merely "feeling good". Just as our immune system can only develop through exposure to germs and disease, our psychological health is boosted by weathering stress and change.
Mental health is achieved through nurturing certain attitudes and behaviours that equip us to engage wholeheartedly with these aspects of life and to celebrate all we discover about ourselves and others in the process.
Tony Bates is the founder director of Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health (www.headstrong.ie). Contact tbates@irish-times.ie