POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

INTRODUCTION Positive Psychology is the branch of psychology that in investigate and promote realities ways of fostering more joy in individuals and communities. It seeks to find and nurture geniuses and talent and to make normal life more fulfilling, rather than merely treating mental illness. This was introduced in 1998 when Morton Seligum chose this as the theme of his term as President of the American Psychological Association. DISCUSSION Happiness encompasses many different emotional and mental phenomena. Human seek happiness all the time. It is the goal of all human endeavors. And people avoid it all the times and at all cost unhappiness. Success is measured in terms of happiness. Life satisfaction is equated with happiness. But happiness and unhappiness has to coexist from one to appropriate the value of the other. A person has to experience unhappiness to understand the meaning of happiness and viceversa. The mid-life crisis ranks the first reliable drop in happiness during the average human life. Before a person reaches 40 years old, happiness is building up. Reasons for these include greater awareness on oneself and preferences, an ability to control his senses and hold more realistic expectations. Getting closer to death may motivate people to pursue more goals and improve social skills. However, by the age 40 50 years, people tend to get less happy. Depression in the elderly is often due largely to passivity and inaction, i.e. people should continue to do the things that bring happiness even in old age. Money makes a significant difference to the poor but has a greatly diminished effect once one reaches middle class. More people over estimate the influence of wealth. Good education or a high IQ reliably increases happiness. Main benefit of intelligence is that it allows one to reach the middle class level up satisfaction. Parenting or being a parent does not make a person happier. The joys of having a child are over shadowed by the responsibilities of parenthood. Weather in the environment is not a factor to happiness. Although, studies seems to show people in SUNNIER places are happier. Research also shows that only recent events that have occurred within the last 3 months affect happiness level. Adaptation or getting used to it explains this. However, adaptation is slower for other distracting life changes such as death of a spouse or losing ones job.

Men are less happy than woman. But women are more prone to depression. Married people are happier than unmarried people. Or people in a good, healthy relationship are happier than people who are not in a relationship. An emotionally stable personality correlates well with happiness. Negative personality traits tend to bring unhappiness. Happiness spread more consistently among friends, siblings, spouses and next door neighbors. If you want to be happy, be with happy people. Unfortunately, happiness can also be elusive and people find it difficult to achieve contentment and lasting happiness. So, people tend to make shout out to happiness. Shortcuts are experiences that create positive emotion within but without having to work for the positive emotions. These include shopping, prohibited drugs, chocolates, loveless sex and TV. These explain why people are draw to these things. Good to remember these have the ability to become addictive.

CONCLUSION The pleasant life, happy life is good feelings about past, present and future. Happy all the way. People living individualistic, rather than collectivist societies are happier. Politics should promote the happiness of the population and also the future generations. We Filipinos are known as happiest people in the world. We laugh a lot, even in times of adversities. It could be a matter at looking at the things on the happier side. Also, suffering can be managed and reduced but not eliminated. Positive psychology focuses on productive approaches to pain and suffering as well as the importance of cultivating strengths and virtues to keep suffering to a minimum.

ETHICS IN THE WORKPLACE Joshua Joseph, Ethics Resource Centers 2000 National Business Ethics Survey October 2000 INTRODUCTION Organizational ethics are sets of formal and informal standards of conduct that people use to guide their behavior at work, partly based in core values such as honesty, respect and trust, but they can be learned directly from the actions of others. People see their organizational leaders, managers and co-workers do on the job can influence their own views of what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior. Ethics program are formal policies, practices and processes that organization develops to deal with their own ethical crises. Positive work place ethics should develop a written ethics standard, provide ethics training and ensure resources are available for employees in need of ethics advice. Formal ethics program are becoming increasingly common in U.S. organization across the non-profit, for profit and government sector. DISCUSSION Organizations are encouraged to come up with an effective ethics program. Studies show the potential benefits of an effective ethics program which includes: recruiting and retraining top quality people fostering of a more satisfying and productive environment building and sustaining your associations reputation within the communities in which they operate. monitoring the trust of members to ensure continued self-regulation legitimizing open discussion of ethical issues providing ethical guidance and resources to employee prior to making difficult decisions aligning the work efforts of staff with the association s mission and vision

Thus, the ethics program is meant to affect how people think about and address ethical issues that rise on the job. Ethical guidelines in the form of policies and practice give employees the basic tool they need to take informed risks on behalf of their organization. These ethical guidelines benefit organization by steering employees away from ethical risk taking and into more productive and appropriate kind of risk taking. However, ethical program cannot prevent and misconduct from occurring. Even in the best-run and most ethical organization, there are always a few employees who willfully break the rules. In such cases, there is no substitute for clear procedures and sanctions. But the real function of the ethics

program is to allow basically good people to do the right thing and served. This is the essence of a healthy work environment. less pressure on employees to compromise ethics standard less observed misconduct at work greater willingness to repost misconduct greater satisfaction with their organization greater likelihood of feeling valued by their organization

Organizations and employees draw the greatest benefits of ethics program when times are toughest. Executives underestimate the importance of specific ethics issues and concern from employees. As a result, they may also fail to address issues adequately. Thus, it is important for executives to include input from employees at lower levels in the development of ethics program and continue to solicit input and feedback on a regular basis. Strong link to pressures to compromise an organizations ethics standard with employees observation of misconduct is noted. More than 40% of employee who observed misconduct at work did not report it. Managers showed be aware that employees are as likely to fear retaliation from coworkers as they are from management.

CONCLUSION Ethics in the workplace or within the organization with good and effective ethics program result in good work ethics. Its fundamental characteristics are: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. HONESTY no cheating in whatever is being done. DEPENDABILITY being reliable means of being reliable EFFICIENCY not wasteful of time and resources POSITIVE WORK HABITS punctuality, dressing appropriately, shuffling jobs not good INITIATIVE - dont wait to be told HUMILITY trait of the wise POSITIVE ATTITUDE get good response from co-worker TEAMWORK part of a team no matter what role you play. Do what is good not only for you but also what is beneficial for the team.

Business ethics issues are always going to exert its effect in the workplace or organization. Ethics program and training to develop good work ethics provide employees a road map for them to act and react