“Positive psychology is the scientific study of what makes life most worth living” (Peterson, 2008). In length, positive psychology is a scientific method aimed towards studying human thoughts, feelings, behaviour, and what gives meaning to life, while focusing on ones strengths rather than weaknesses. Positive psychology asks the question, "What is right with you?", unlike traditional psychology that asks, "What is wrong with you?". It is aimed to help you build your strengths rather than repair your weaknesses. Positive psychology is not intended to replace traditional psychology but rather build off of it to help increase one's well being.

Optimism is both the belief that the outcomes of events or experiences will generally be positive and the positive explanatory styles of the causes of events. Optimists see the causes of failure or negative experiences as temporary rather than permanent, isolated rather than global, and external rather than internal. Many of us, I am sure, do not see ourselves as optimists, fortunately we can become them through learned optimism. Learned optimism is a concept created by Martin Seligman that argues that we can develop a positive mindset through recognizing and challenging negative self talk, tackling the 3 P's - Personalization, Pervasiveness, and Permanence. Through research he discovered that optimism improved the individual's health, motivation, performance, and career success. If you would like to go into further depth you can head to this link: https://positivepsychology.com/learned-optimism/, which is an informative article on positive psychology.