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Dale Floody doesn’t guarantee reading his book will be a magical potion to a happier life.
What the Viterbo University adjunct professor and Holmen resident does expect is readers will gain a broader understanding of positive psychology from “Balanced Positive Psychology: Where the Grass is Greener.”
If you don’t know what that means, no worries. I didn’t, either, but Floody does a good job of explaining it in the book and in person — after all, he has been a psychology instructor for 35 years.
Positive psychology really took off in 2000, he said. Psychologists long had focused on negative behaviors — phobias, aggression and psychopathology, to name a few, he said.
Positive psychology was a breath of fresh air, he said. It looked at the flip side of the coin: happiness.
Unfortunately, that’s about all it looked at, Floody said. It neglected a deeper exploration of what constitutes happiness, such as peace, mindfulness, serenity, humor, spirituality and other aspects of positive mental health and behavior.
“I firmly believe that a more positive approach to psychology is an excellent idea, but that it needs to be done in a more balanced way,” he said in the preface of the book.
His book, published in April, reviews research and theory concerning living life in a positive way.
It delves into the aspects of positive behavior he thinks have been neglected. For example, he explores both the negative and positive side of humor.
To differentiate shouldn’t be hard, since we’ve probably all done both kinds. Negative humor, he said, is when the joke is self-deprecating or makes fun of someone else. Positive humor, on the other hand, doesn’t.
Floody said he likes to use humor in his writing and classes, and working on the book has helped him avoid the negative kind.
He hopes by reading the book, people will understand their own positive behavior and ways of promoting that behavior.
“It increases the odds that you’ll live a better life and have better mental health, but I’m not promising it,” he said.
He said writing the book has helped him live happier. He attempts to be more mindful of his surroundings and grateful for what he has.
Floody continues to update his book online at his Web site at
www.balancedpsych.com. He’s recently added a section on narcissism, contesting recent claims that youth today are narcissistic.
“I’m a scientist at heart, so I just don’t believe something when I read it,” he said.
BUY THE BOOK: Dale Floody’s book can be purchased online at
www.amazon.com for $21.
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