A POSITIVE APPROACH

A positive approach first is the contrary of negative, that is: we are looking at ourselves and others in a benevolent, positive way.

We will search for achievements, successes, joys and happy states and encounters, fulfillments and developments,… in our clients situations. More than searching for what they did wrong or badly.

Strangely enough, by searching for those strengths, we do find them (greatly outnumbering their failures).

What are we precisely looking for ?

Well states or states of well-being and correlated professional and personal achievements.

This is just another approach, complementary to the common, prehistorical, clinical and negative one that searches for prominent savants, say lawyers, to assist so that one may deliver his expert knowledge and/or high-tech or eventually medically assisted treatments to the ignorant average people.

Being positive is much more than not being negative, in the absence of sickness and deficits, with each new file and client we embark on a journey in the fascinating world of human strengths, virtues and positive traits of personality.

We know that the negative emotions, or let us rather speak of negative affects as unpleasant feelings arise in oneself, have had a clear and crucial role in our evolution.

Negative affects such a fear of an imminent danger prepared us to run for our life whereas anger triggered agressivity and initiated our fighting skills.

Negative affectivity is most of the time not necessary anymore to adapt in our extremely structured and mostly safe world but on the contrary, causes communication disorders, inefficient organizations or teams, individual depressions and other psychological or physical diseases or disorders.

Harm may still happen to us, especially in an increasingly competitive and worldwide economy, and those emotions remain necessary with interesting effects such as narrowing our attention to the source of the threat to better defend ourselves and adapt.

Positive affects on the other side, prepared us to look for food, shelter and mate. This is called a behavioural facilitation system that provides for the search of rewarding situations that may yield pleasure.

I hear babies cry… I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more… than I’ll never know
And I think to myself… what a wonderful worl.

Louis Armstrong