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Sean Epley

Professor Jizi

Class 1104-059

14 October 2017

Future Authoring Essay

The year is 2023 and I have everything Ive ever wanted and my life is ideal, I am

married to the girl Ive always wanted to be with, I have enough money to provide for my family

and I have strong relationships with my family members, even those I didnt always have that

with. Although I put in the effort to make this life for myself I was only able to create a life so in

tune with what Ive always wanted by integrating my own unique characteristics into the

elements of the positive psychology theory described by the acronym PERMA, which stands for

Positive emotion, engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishments. This theory of

positive psychology describes happiness as a concept that revolves around these elements of

PERMA and how present these elements are in life. By using this model I consciously, years

ago, made a choice to live my life in accordance with these elements which has led me to the

fulfilling life I live today.

Throughout my life I have always been very fulfilled by my relationships with those

around me that I care about. This is reflected by the VIA Character strength assessment that I

took which said capacity to love and be loved was my top strength. Not only is this importance

of love reflected in my character strengths but love is also my top value. This has always been

apparent to me because arguments with my family used to always hurt me more than they

probably should for most other people regardless of how small they are, and I think the event that

illustrates this the most is my political disagreements with my Dad. 7 years ago in a presidential
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election me and my dad were complete opposites of each other and we would argue so much to

the point that I stopped seeing him. Even though his candidate won and mine didnt he still made

it a point to argue with me whenever he could. He refused to pay for my higher education and

even said he was happy when I left for college because he wanted a break from me. This hurt me

a lot and made me think about the times before when I was little and he was the best Dad I could

imagine and how much he changed. I didnt even recognize who he was anymore because of the

pointlessly hateful rhetoric he always would spew. From this I realized that the issue was that he

had just bought into the fear mongering he saw on the news to have a scapegoat to blame for his

lack of money even though he didnt graduate high school. This used to really frustrate me and

even though not feeling loved anymore by my dad hurt a lot I still wanted to rebuild things. This

led me to wait until the next election when things were less polarized to slowly try to get back to

where I was. Over time I made an effort to show him that I still loved him and wanted a

relationship and eventually led to us moving past it and accepting that we dont have to be

identical people. I consciously made this effort because I knew, based off of the relationships of

PERMA, my values and character strengths that rebuilding would make my quality of life a lot

better. I knew I wouldnt change him so I never tried and I explained to him that he wouldnt

change me and once we both understood that and accepted it things got better and now, all this

time later we dont argue anymore and things are a lot better than I used to ever think they could

be again. Throughout this essay you will notice the positive emotion element of PERMA

throughout because Ive always used hardships to become a better person and find positive

outcomes from negative situations, and from this story I found that I became more tolerant of

others opinions, even though I used to think bigotry didnt deserve tolerance. This also helped

develop my sense of tolerance more, which reflects the fact that in my values exercise I got
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tolerance as my 2nd most prevalent value. I recognized that this issue as a whole could be

resolved by using positive emotion to make my life better by getting more fulfilling relationships

back in my life.

Another element of PERMA that I used to get me to the life I have now is achievement.

Although I graduated college and was successful in my job, when Im honest with myself I feel

that my marriage is what Im most happy about and what I get the most sense of accomplishment

from due to the fulfillment I get from this, and the efforts I made to make it work out. Early in

highschool I met a girl I started dating but eventually left me because of how I acted around her.

I was really devastated and used it as motivation to change myself and a couple years later I

moved on and met the girl Im married to now. At the time she was best friends with my ex and

this made it harder because she had given her a wrong idea of who I was and I had to work hard

to change that perception and eventually as time went on I realized it was working out and I was

the opposite of the person that made the first girl leave me and I didnt have to fake it which

made me feel very accomplished to take something that was so traumatic and make it a positive

and use it to change who I was for the better. We were together for 2 years and then college

came and we were both very worried because she was going to Appalachian State which was 2

hours away from where I went. I had a lot of worries and issues with what was changing around

us and I used my character strength of honesty and genuineness to talk to her about issues I had

and how I felt about what was changing even though sometimes it really hurt her because of how

she perceived it. The first few weeks were very hard and we talked it out and worked to make it

easier and after a couple weeks of school we realized that it was easier than we thought it would

be to make it work. I know that in large part my honesty about my concerns was what made her

trust me and got us through the change as easy as we did. Even though we spent a lot of money
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on gas to see each other, we found that through work and trust we were making it work pretty

easily. At this point we realized that thing were going surprisingly well and we both started to

think a few years down the road after graduation and maybe getting married if it lasted that long.

I used the element of accomplishment to make this goal and make a solid effort to achieve it

because when I imagined it working out in my head I already felt the fulfillment that the element

of accomplishment described I would feel once my goal was achieved which made me motivated

to make it actually work in real life because if I felt accomplished just imagining it I knew

making it happen would be that much better. Once we graduated and moved in together though,

things got harder. We had more disagreements about things and managing money was a new

aspect we didnt have to handle before, which led to some issues at first but we both put in a lot

of effort to make it work and eventually we did. We soon after got married and with this new

label came more stability and that stability hasnt diminished. I feel very accomplished by the

relationship I have and I know that my conscious decisions to change who I was, be honest all

the time even if it wasnt what she wanted to hear and the ability to make compromises when

needed, ultimately made it work. Nobody changed me for me, I did it myself and this led me to

feel very engaged and fully in control of my life which was an added benefit of making this work

out.

The final element I used to get me to where I am now is meaning. I think that meaning is

fully subjective and my meaning I created for myself once starting research into PERMA was to

be able to make enough money to support people I love and kids one day once I decided to have

them. This led me to change how I lived my life by taking every measure I could to make sure I

had money when I graduated. At the beginning of college I was slacking in some ways and

focussed too much on having fun with my friends because I was afraid that if I didnt do as much
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with them Id lose people I valued but over time I realized that Id eventually fall behind and

never be able to get as much meaning as Id like by not being able to provide for my loved ones.

This led me to buckle down in school and tell my friends no at times when I knew I needed to

work harder in my studies. This was hard because I was afraid they would think I didnt want to

be around them and we would grow apart but I quickly realized I was worrying too much about

nothing but it was very hard to make that change and I used my character strength of bravery to

tell them no when I knew I should even if this decision wasnt as brave as youd expect from a

brave person. With this bravery and new work ethic, I succeed by pushing myself with my future

financial state in mind as motivation. This motivation was my meaning in life and is what made

me get up each morning because in my mind I was working for something bigger than myself. I

remember vividly that in my first semester of college I was struggling in pre-calculus and made a

56 on my first test and I knew this wasnt a productive way of getting through college so I made

a change and on my 2nd test even though the material was more difficult I made a 76 and only

got better from there. My 3rd most prevalent value is intelligence and this was very clear to me

while I was in these academic challenges because I took my education seriously so I could be as

financially stable as possible in the future, which ultimately in the end I ended up being stable

and able to provide which made my meaning I made for myself come full circle which helped to

make my life as fulfilling as it is now.

Throughout my life Ive had many ups and downs, and Ive put in effort to make changes

in my life when needed based off of research into my values, character strengths and positive

psychology theory. Looking back I wouldnt change a thing because all of the events of my life

have made me who I am today and helped me get to where I am now. It has been a long and

sometimes hard journey I went on to make my life as fulfilling as it has been, and is now.
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Works Cited

Seligman, Martin. The PERMA Model: Your Scientific Theory of Happiness. Positive

Psychology Program - Your One-Stop PP Resource!, 1 Aug. 2017,

positivepsychologyprogram.com/perma-model/.

What Are Your Values?: Deciding What's Most Important in Life. Decision-Making Skills

from MindTools.Com, www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_85.htm.