Michael Walters

Regardless of your profession, continuous professional development is necessary so that you can be the best that you can be. Therefore, as a professional counselor, the idea of continuous professional development is crucial for your success and your clients’ success. As an educator and counselor for twenty-three years, I recently completed my training to become a counselor supervisor. So with this blog entry, I would like to share three major benefits of what counseling supervision should provide to a new counselor.

“It’s the most wonderful time of year.” However, many people are in employment situations which are causing them grief and stress. For example, there are many people who are unemployed, and there are many high school and college students who are unsure of their college and career direction. So, as you gather together during the holiday season with friends and family as well as with new acquaintances, this can be a very good time to have conversations with people to help them with their career development and provide them with hope for the upcoming year.

No matter what your role or multiple roles you may have in your life, high expectations can be very beneficial to have because they motivate us to do better than we think we can. For the role of the student, for example, too often students will choose to take less demanding classes so that they can avoid failure.

“I want to go to the movies,” says one sibling. “But I want to go to the baseball game,” says the other sibling. “I want to make dinner on the grill tonight,” says the husband. “But I want to use our new oven to make dinner tonight,” says the wife. “Wash the dishes this way,” says Mom. “No, I wash the dishes my way,” says the daughter. The union wants a contract with a salary increase. But the company wants to impose a contract with a salary decrease. The high school senior wants to go to college, but his family cannot afford to pay for college. Everyday experience suggests that conflict cannot be avoided in interaction with others. So what are some practical strategies for resolving conflict?

Two pioneers of positive psychology are psychologists Martin Seligman from the University of Pennsylvania and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi from Claremont Graduate University. They began to communicate their definition of positive psychology around 1998. From their view, since World War II, psychology had become a science largely about healing mental disorders. It concentrated on repairing damage within a disease model of human functioning. In contrast, the aim of positive psychology is to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from preoccupation only with repairing the worse things in life to also building positive qualities. Their prediction is that positive psychology in this century will allow psychologists to understand and build those factors that allow individuals, families, and communities to flourish, not just endure and survive. As a side effect of studying positive human traits, science will learn how to buffer against and better prevent mental, as well as some physical, illnesses. For the purpose of this blog entry, I will quickly review the concept of well-being theory that is proposed by positive psychology which can be used as another useful tool for the counselor’s toolbox.