Eve Loo reflects on her journey with Positive Psychology and how she utilises what she learns in her daily life.
Eve Loo
Executive Assistant, Deloitte Consulting SEA
Graduate Diploma in Applied Positive Psychology, 2021
Postgraduate Diploma in Positive Organisational Psychology and Leadership, 2022
Q: What best describes your Positive Psychology journey?
A beautiful journey will not start without any test of our endurance and perseverance. My beautiful endurance training began six years ago as a long-distance swimmer.
My daily endurance long-distance swimming in cold water builds my overall well-being, which is the flow experience in positive psychology. I swim in both indoor and outdoor night settings with a temperature of 25 to 26-degree water in an Olympic pool of 3 metres depth. I went through the coldest time where external weather and water were about 24 to 25 degrees in a very windy condition. The water is icy cold. The calmness I have set in my mind has given me persistence and consistency in overcoming anything.
To me, mindfulness swimming creates the highest form of my self-awareness, emotional awareness, and environmental awareness. My mindfulness in swimming and knowing about positive psychology has grown and unleashes my creativity in many forms.
Q: How has Positive Psychology impacted your life?
Positive Psychology resonates with me and has changed my life from many different perspectives. It has opened a new lens of what life could be and what I can do to pay the learning forward to the community. It never occurred to me that Positive Psychology was something I had been waiting for, but amazingly, doors opened to lead me to this path.
What struck me the most was Robert’s Positive Psychology coaching class. Robert’s style is one of the most unique, creative, innovative classes I have ever attended. Every sentence of words spoken was a thought process for me to think through a lot. It always has, without fail, and it will bring me into a thinking mode. Interestingly, all the sessions I am attending were like coaching sessions to me. The question asked is already a coaching session.
Q: How did you integrate Positive Psychology into your life?
I started practicing and creating Positive Psychology interventions in my own social circles. Through positive engagement and connection, I was able to enjoy life-giving moments and experiences with others.
Even before the course, I had already started on small iterative positive psychology intervention from 2016 to 2018. I always love to create videos; capturing everyone’s moment is the best memory of the positive moment in people’s lives. Creating and customized every video for people. Over that period, I have completed over 20 videos for different people.
This passion for video creation continues even now. I have developed a more advanced way of converting riddles story into animated video content, releasing weekly via social media to provide positive emotions to the universe and a larger group of unknown communities.
Stay true to my intention of creating positive emotions is the virtue I bring to provide the best for humankind.
Q: Any advice to people thinking of making changes in life?
Following my heart will bring me to the path beyond the horizon.
We have our most internal resource to bring about changes to ourselves and the people around us. The most unique penmanship is us. We decide how each of the chapters of the story will be like. Having an adaptive mind opens the door to many positivity that unfold. We hold the key to unlock the door that leads to the path of the journey we want in our life. We are the master of creating different highlights and turning points in any part of our story. Our daily life journey comprises of many chapters added together and that make up where we are now.
Eve’s WOW moment in Positive PSychology journey is during Robert’s Positive Psychology coaching class:
Dr. Robert Biswas-Diener’s class is one of the most unique, creative, and innovative classes I have ever attended. Every sentence of words spoken was a thought process for me to think through a lot. It always has, without fail, and will bring me into a thinking mode. Interestingly, all the sessions I am attending were like coaching sessions to me. The question asked is already a coaching session.
How does it help?
One of the most powerful ways of knowing ourselves is through questioning. Robert’s ways of teaching have unknowingly let me go back into a creative zone of unique thinking.
How unique is it? The uniqueness comes from the way he allows space for me to think more. His way of teaching creates our curiosity; exploration is the main element to our well-being. Although it is challenging, it is a way to break away from the usual way of thinking, but instead, it makes me think more in-depth than my normal thought and consciously look at a different perspective. The whole learning process changes my level of confidence. I am accountable for the change I have. It makes me think more sophisticatedly.
The most significant change is my understanding and the beautiful part of science. I know only very surface-level stuff, but I am more diligent in the reading paper, understanding its science through this learning. This was one of the sentences told when I was asking about academic writing.
There is never a magical path in learning. We learn through understanding, realization, reflecting, failing, and knowing our mistakes, providing a continuous improvement and learning attitude. I treasure the transformation of this journey very much because Robert has really brought me a lot of insight, particularly to positive psychology beyond the usual term, which I have never even thought of before. It allows me to use my strength in the creative field in psychology. I value creativity and the field of arts. It allows me to think of how arts, coaching, and positive psychology are forming together.
I saw a value that monetary rewards could not measure, as it was a value of self-worth in life. This whole journey enhanced my self-esteem, and it inspired me to keep going even when times were tough.
The journey as a Positive Psychology Practitioner enriched me in many ways — it grew my mind daily with new insights. Learning about my character strengths and resilience helped me reflect more on how I could utilize them in daily life.
I got to know my beloved Teammates – Zax, Shaleen, and Wei Jun, throughout this journey. The beautiful connection that brings us together. We have so much fun, playing while working hard every time for our assignment paper. What matters most is our togetherness as a whole in this learning journey.
I am very grateful and blessed to have the Circle of Support Group with fellow graduates of The School of Positive Psychology. It gives me support and a community of other like-minded individuals to journey with. The school’s encouragement creates positive engagement and positive emotions, which leads to an increase in our subjective well-being.
Learning different business courses outside of my work other than my current study has opened a new path. It gives me the idea to create a series of the Resilience training program through Agile methodology into creative video content in a small iterative cycle.
Inspired to embark on your own transformation journey? Find out more on the courses that Eve completed at The School of Positive Psychology!
