It could be that you have a goal in mind that you’d like some support with. It might be that you’re stressed or depressed and would like to feel more positive. Or maybe you’re languishing in an area of life and would like to flourish instead. Positive psychology is a scientifically-grounded form of coaching which operates in an evidence-based framework, drawing on the research and tools from the science of optimal functioning & well-being. This is one-to-one coaching tailored to meet your particular needs and goals so that you feel good, function well and flourish on every level – psychologically, emotionally, professionally, spiritually, physically and financially. It is a strengths-based approach that harnesses your natural talents to build your personal well-being and promote your professional success. One of the principles of positive psychology is that your maximum potential for growth lies in developing your strengths rather than in fixing your weaknesses. Helping you to thrive, from wherever your starting point, is the ultimate goal of positive psychology coaching. Your immediate needs might be to:-

• Build resilience to manage stress
• Overcome chronic low mood & low-grade depression
• Stave off burnout

Beyond that positive psychology can help you to:-

• Achieve personal & professional goals
• Identify and act from strengths
• Support you in striving for your goals
• Increase happiness & well-being
• Build positivity to reach the tipping point of flourishing
• Boost resilience to bounce back from adversity and stress
• Develop optimism & deflate pessimism
• Build psychological capital
• Discover purpose in life & work
• Increase meaning and engagement
• Manage career crossroads & life transitions
• Protect against and recover from depression
• Move on after burnout
• Stimulate creative thinking
• Flourish
• Transform

The great thing about positive psychology coaching is that it uses tools that have been scientifically proven to work. Positive psychology’s evidence-based techniques are grounded in the knowledge to help you thrive and prosper.

PERSONAL COACHING: Is it worth investing in coaching to raise the bar on your personal well-being? Well happiness is a worthwhile goal because not only does it feel good it does you good too. It gives you greater flexibility of thinking, creativity and helps you be more productive in your work. Happy people enjoy better health and stronger immune systems. In fact happy people live on average for an extra 9 years – powerful evidence of its benefits! There is a a proven relationship between happiness and success – success leads to happiness and happiness to success. Happy people enjoy higher incomes and higher ratings from their customers and colleagues. The good news is that around 40% of your capacity for happiness is under your voluntary control so there is a lot you can do to positively influence your well-being.

Some people choose coaching because they want to experience greater positivity and satisfaction in life. Others want to learn the psychological techniques to boost their mood naturally and overcome a tendency to depression. If you’re wondering whether coaching or therapy would be the right thing for you, then here’s some guidance – if you have unresolved issues from the past that keep interfering in your present life then therapy may be the right thing for you.  If, on the other hand, you have goals that you want to achieve in your life but have had difficulties in moving forwards with them or a specific goal you’d like some support on then coaching might be more useful. Although coaching and therapy do overlap, the main difference is that coaching is behavioural mentoring focused on what you want to achieve for your life whereas counselling is about gaining an emotional understanding of past difficulty.

This quote referring to Martin Seligman, the co-founder of positive psychology, sums up the differences between  positive psychology coaching and therapy.  “Dr. Seligman is training Positive Psychologists, individuals whose practice will make the world a happier place, parallel to the way clinical psychologists have made the world a less unhappy place.” –  Positive Psychology Center, University of Pennsylvania.

EXECUTIVE COACHING: Coaching for your business to build your psychological capital, marshall your strengths, enhance your performance, promote your success, realise your potential and manage stress. If you’re self-employed or working for a SME, then this is a way of accessing personal support for your particular needs and goals. Your greatest opportunity for professional development comes from focusing on your strengths rather than your weaknesses. By playing to your strengths you’re creating the conditions for you to excel with ease because you’re using the talents that come naturally! There is a growing body of evidence that organisations that encourage strengths development in their staff benefit from higher levels of employee engagement, motivation, increased performance, job satisfaction and success. If you’re looking to support your professional well-being, make the next career move or want to increase your resilience in times of uncertainty and stress, then this is for you.

The positive psychology approach to coaching can be applied to anything you want to achieve, personal or professional. Coaching is usually in blocks of 1-hour sessions so that we can track your progress and you achieve a sustainable change. Alternatively you can book a one-off 1.5 hour session to focus on a particular issue.

Coaching Programmes

The Highly Effective Habits of Happy People: This coaching package will boost your positivity and raise your level of happiness by training you in the evidence-based skills of happiness, tailored to your particular needs. 2 x 1-hour coaching sessions a month over 4 months (total 8 hours) or more frequently if you prefer. Plus email contact to top up and support you between sessions. £500 per programme.

The Positive Psychology Programme: How to feel good and function well. We take a 360-degree look at your life and apply a broad range of positive psychology tools to help you flourish across all areas. You’ll learn how positive psychology works with you as the guinea pig! Across 8 x 1-hour sessions we will cover these key areas in positive psychology (well-being, positive emotions, flow, strengths, optimism, resilience, motivation, goals, relationships and life purpose) and address both dimensions of happiness – the hedonic (the peaks of joy and other positive emotions) with the eudaimonic (the deeper sense of meaning in life.) We pay attention to the ‘whole you’ including the physical and spiritual aspects of well-being. Each session is guided by whatever is current for you and we use this as a way in to learn about and apply positive psychology. 8 x 1 hour sessions; £500 per programme.

Other Coaching Options

Coaching To Positivity, Away from Depression: If you suffer from recurrent or chronic low moods, mild depression, emotional flatness or burnout and would like to protect yourself from depression or speed your recovery from it, then this is for you. We will teach you the evidence-based techniques to develop your experience of positive emotions like joy, contentment or satisfaction, grow your capacity for happiness and alleviate the symptoms of depression. Through coaching you will master the tools that will stop further episodes of depression and lead to a more sustainable form of happiness. Please note that this is coaching aimed at teaching you self-help techniques to overcome mild-to-moderate depression and is not a substitute for clinical treatment. You should consult your doctor to decide on the best approach for you.

Strengths-Coaching: Identify your strengths and find out how to apply your natural talents for success. Your strengths are the levers that you can pull to help you on the path to flourishing. The research shows that people who focus their efforts on developing their strengths rather than on fixing their weaknesses are more effective and enjoy greater success and well-being in their lives.

Coaching for Creativity: Research shows increasing your experience of positivity stimulates creative and flexible thinking. This is coaching to inspire you, spark your imagination, help you think ‘outside the box’ and generate exciting new ideas.

Media Coaching: If you have a public event or a media interview, we can help you prepare by honing your presentation skills and thinking through your communications strategy. Miriam worked across network radio and TV in the UK for over two decades and has extensive experience of presenting and engaging an audience.

Coaching sessions on the phone, on Skype or in person (Bristol/Bath or elsewhere by prior arrangement). We coach people locally, in the UK and overseas. For a free 20-minute consultation to discuss your coaching needs and find out about fees, please get in touch. We’d love to hear from you!

Clients: Have a read below to get an idea of why some people choose coaching with positive psychology. Clients come from all walks of life and backgrounds and include coaches, therapists, psychologists and health professionals with a personal interest in positive psychology.

Testimonials

“Facing redundancy after 7 years of working for the same company, I decided to sign up for a series of coaching sessions with Miriam. Just last week I was telling someone about my new job that I love and the words I used to explain it rang a bell. They were almost the exact words that Miriam and I had put together to construct the description of my ideal job during our sessions. At the time I had no idea what the job role would be but I knew how I wanted to feel about it and the qualities it would bring to myself and other people. It’s wonderful that what I wanted has materialised and I am very grateful to Miriam for her use of cutting-edge methods to help me see a future that I’d not even believed was possible for me.” Isabelle, Bristol

“I had a dream of writing a book on positive psychology for parents to share what this new branch of psychology has to offer. Miriam has done an amazing job of helping me clarify exactly what I needed to do and has helped me stay on track despite all the competing demands of my busy job as a child psychologist. As a coach myself I know what a difference coaching makes to getting an important project up and running. Miriam really does walk the positive psychology talk with positivity, kindness and huge optimism which always lifted my spirits, focused my intentions and helped me find another burst of energy. Now I have a finished book proposal and 2 publishers interested in taking it forward. How brilliant is that!” Jeni Hooper, Child Psychologist & Parent Coach

Positive Psychology is a great way of focusing on the strengths we hold inside (instead of dwelling on the negatives!) and putting them to best use. It provided me with a wealth of tools and techniques to use when I feel as though I am struggling and I am using these on a daily basis. At the end of our course we put together a life plan to take away and focus on in the future. I have found this incredibly beneficial as it gives me a way in which to focus on achieving my ultimate end goal – to be happy! Miriam is a fantastic teacher, whose warm and genuine nature is apparent from the very beginning. I feel very fortunate to have worked with her. Mel, S.Glos.

“A combination of Miriam’s natural desire to help people thrive and the science of Positive Psychology makes for a great coaching experience. I am now much appreciative of what I do have; I am practising mindfulness with more success and I now feel I have a set of goals and a sense of direction. Rather than thinking ‘when I achieve this, then I’ll be ‘happy’ I am enjoying, savouring the journey of getting there.” Peter Kershaw, London

I approached Miriam Akhtar for some personal coaching having found that her CD on the topic went some way towards helping my anxiety and depression from which I had suffered occasionally over a number of years.   I had been given a variety of medication but found that my body could no longer tolerate the side effects.   I had also quite recently undergone an 8-session face-to-face CBT course which had given temporary relief only since I was not given any self-help tools on which I could draw. Miriam’s training was different and more effective in that it gave me those tools to cope with down times and to accept that by focusing on things in my life that gave me happiness I would be better equipped to find a positive solution to those difficulties that had dogged me before. I feel more positive about my attitude to life having completed Miriam’s 6-session telephone coaching as she had helped me identify my strengths and use them to pursue that elusive goal of happiness. I was very comfortable with coaching by telephone and felt that it offered no barriers at all to sharing my most personal thoughts and experiences with somebody whom I grew to regard as a friend.” TH, Hants