Coursera-- Positive Psychology Class

This week something I'm working on is a class on Coursera about Positive Psychology.

Coursera.org is a company that offers free lectures and even assignments from college professors across the world. They are a for-profit company, so they offer paid "verified certificates" and specializations to prove it's you taking the classes, but their core mission is to provide free access to learning materials to anyone who wants to put forth the effort.

The classes on Coursera vary in length, in-depth coverage, and how well they are put together, but I've learned some awesome things from them. Psychology is one of my favorite subjects, so I've taken Social Psychology, Behavioral Economics, Animal Behavior, and Learning How to Learn. Sometimes the classes are taught by top professors in their fields, and in the Social Psychology class the professor actually had a recorded Google Hangout with Philip Zimbardo (from the Stanford Prison Experiment) and a Google Hangout with the Dalai Lama that a handful of students from the course got to participate in. I'd recommend all of these courses if you happen to catch them while they are being offered.

A word of warning with Coursera and other learning websites I'll post here is that you really get out of any of these classes what you put into it. I've signed up for dozens of other classes through Coursera and other sites and haven't finished many because it's so easy to sign up and stay motivated for that first week and then never log on again. It's also too easy to be interested in everything, and dedicated to nothing.

Back to the Positive Psychology class, it's taught by Barbara Fredrickson who has written two books on Positive Psychology (Love 2.0 and Positivity). I watched the lectures and read both of her books last year and I credit them to helping me make the changes I needed to pull myself out of a depression and becoming a happier person. This year, I'm retaking the course with a family member who is going through a hard time and I'm making more of a point to do the projects.

One of the cool suggestions from the Positive Psychology class is the idea to create Positivity Portfolios that you keep updated and fresh as sources to pull you out of a funk when you feel one coming on. Lately I've been trying to cultivate a Reading List, Music List, and a Dvd/Movie List of things that make me happy that I can turn to if... when life gets tough again. Maybe someday I'll even add an on-going list here on my blog if anyone's interested.

If you check out Positive Psychology, let me know what you think of it. And if you find another course you'd recommend, be sure to tell me and there's a good chance I'll take it.