How I got here...what I'm trying to do.

I guess I am a bit of a classic convert to Positive Psychology.

My original exposure to psychology formally was in college at Northeastern University. I had been intrigued by how the brain worked in high school delving into subjects ranging between Eastern Philosophies, self-help and sports coaching - with a pretty strong interest in the Beat Generation. I had NO idea what my interests were at this point - outside of sport. In fact, I didn't have a clue what really interested me for pretty much my entire college experience. 

I was lost between the athletic world (I was on a baseball scholarship) that was physically enthralling but always seemed to lack depth intellectually. I jumped around academic majors motivated simply by a desire not to be like all the other 'jocks'. But I used my fleeting desire to play professional baseball shared by nearly all college players in the US as a shield from actually taking my studies serious.

Unbeknownst to me, my lack of ability to find an academic area that truly captured me was symptomatic of my inability to consolidate my talents and training in the direction of achieving my desire to play professional baseball.

In both worlds I had glimmers of the potential that lie within but lacked the self-awareness to capture and understand the situations which were invoking the potential that lied within me.

I didn't really know much about the career side of psychology while I was studying. Again, I think this ignorance was acerbated by my belief that I wouldn't need to pursue a career outside of sport. 

In baseball, after battling injuries and under-performing for the first half of my college career, I had a summer where I found that my thoughts of playing professional were far more 'real' than I thought. I surprised even myself with my potential that was spoke about but rarely displayed. I was in a league back home entirely amateur: filled with low-level and ex-college players and far from being any caldron forming potential professional players. Ironically, I was isolated at home. All of my friends were gone and I was left to work a random summer job and train like crazy. I poured myself into my workouts and spent hours perfecting my batting swing. There was no fanfare. There were no scouts. There was just a simple, intrinsic desire to perform. And I did. It was a perfect example of 'Flow'. I would train on non game days and 'test' this training in games. From there I took feedback, developed weaknesses, and created and situation in games to capitalize on my strengths. Besides Little League, this was by far the most fun I've ever had playing the game.

In psychology I got bogged down in performing behavioral research and rehashing breakthrough studies of psychology's past. There was little discussion of the application of psychology but rather the findings of the psychological field. Returning now to Northeastern's Psychology website I see that the department is still focused on: "preparing students for research and teaching careers in a variety of settings, including academia, government, and industry". This was the problem. It was/is a 'passive' program. I was looking for something more engaging, more active - although I didn't really explore what I wanted to achieve in psychology until my time as a student was far over.

My most memorable psychology classes were Social Psychology, Psychology of Women (serious), Perception (simply because my professor R. Eskew was an amazing teacher), and Developmental Psych. (I was looking at my transcript and frightened by the number of classes I just don't remember.)

I really should have been looking at a 'sports psychology' degree. Certainly 'coaching psychology' is very much applying sports psych to the wider population.

I was adverse to sports psych for two reasons. 1. I was already investing a ton of my time in the athletic world as a baseball player and was very self-conscious of dedicating all of myself to sports because I was terrified of being another 'jock'. (Fear makes you irrational because my second choice of careers would have been to be a strength and conditioning coach - something that comes so easy to me - but my fear of the 'jock' label didn't let me explore this field to the level I wish.) 2. I just thought that being a sports psychologist is far too specialized and helping a group of people to be good at 'sport' seemed futile in comparison to the greater population's needs. (The irony being that my inability to solve the riddle of evoking my potential in sport stunted my ability to tap into my potential in many other areas of my life. Just as Csikszentmihalyi as talks about the power of sport in cultivating one's understanding and ability to experience 'flow' in their lives.)

Both my careers in baseball and studying psychology came to an abrupt ending. I came back to baseball at Northeastern totally forgetting everything I did to conjure my deepest athletic potentials the previous summer. I was dizzied and frustrated by the utter lack of control I felt I had in my training and surroundings. I fostered a fixed mindset unable to think creatively about how to foster the habits and routines that brought so much success the summer before. I continued my career of unfulfilled potential in college baseball through my senior year and fostered a pretty pessimistic viewpoint of myself and my own capability of creating my own future.

I think that my recent exposure to the field of Positive Psychology touches me in a multitude of ways. Firstly, this was the tool that would have been very beneficial to overcome the obstacles (many self-manufactured) to realizing my potential as a baseball player and as a student. As we begin the process of rolling out a comprehensive positive psych program at the school I work at I'm excited for the students and the opportunities we are likely to unlock within them. Secondly, this was the area of study lacking in my undergrad studies. Positive Psychology presents an proactive application of psychology. Lastly, I find that this field seems to connect to something I truly value - the potential for all of us to grow and achieve.

So now I'm trying to increase my knowledge of both coaching and positive psychology and integrate this information/understanding into my work at school. We'll see how it goes. I've just applied to the Masters in Applied Science (Coaching Psych) at The University of Sydney and in the midst of a major transformation of my school working with The Positive Psychology Institute in Sydney. It is an exciting time that I think will be transformative in many ways and I'd like to share a bit of that experience here.