My journey into Positive Psychology begins...

For the last 20 years I've been focussed on raising my three children but a few years ago they started spreading their wings and suddenly the mother bird's role was changed.  I felt unsettled, one minute they didn't need me, the next there was a crisis and I was rushed off my feet! I feel it was time to start something new and to spread my own wings.

I started this blog, 'The Fledgling Project' to chronicle my own attempts to get out from the nest and look at life differently. For a year I wrote about my experience of 'doing' rather than 'buying stuff' and other adventures, but when my year was up I had a case of severe writer's block, and stopped blogging as I wasn't sure what to write about next.

So a couple of years passed, life flows on, now two of my children are young adults at university, and my youngest isn't far behind. 

In the meantime, I continued reading and thinking about life and how we should live it, and started reading more and more about happiness and wellbeing. Suddenly, things sort of snowballed, and despite having studied psychology at university (rather a long time ago...) I discovered there was a new branch of psychology which had sprung up whilst I was I was busy building lego with my kids. Positive psychology is the scientific study of psychological wellbeing, the science behind happiness, creativity, positivity, joy, flow, hope, resilience and more - all the things that make life worth living. 

It's sort of surprising that no-one thought of it before, but when I studied psychology previously, we looked at topics such as memory, thinking, child development and abnormal psychology. So I came out of Uni knowing all about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, but not what habits I could develop to make myself happier and more resilient in life.

In the last twenty years or so, interest in positive psychology has grown, and more and more scientists, researchers and practitioners have joined in the quest to understand how we humans flourish, what works and what we think might might make us happier but actually doesn't. And how to apply this to our everyday lives.

So now I have a new direction, and something to write about! In autumn this year I will be studying for an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology at Buckingham New University, and will be learning more about this fascinating subject and exploring how I can apply this knowledge to my own life to change for the better.

In this blog I will write about my own experiences, what I have learned, and share links to some of the great resources that are out there that anyone can access. Although my course doesn't start until the Autumn, I'm already immersing myself in the subject, reading and researching and trying out new things along the way.

It's going to be an exciting flight into new territory for me! I hope you will enjoy reading about it and enjoy the journey with me.