I consider my state-of-mind critical to my success in managing my multiple myeloma. Positive Psychology has been a key therapy to manage my health the same way antineoplastons, nutrition, cancer supplements, etc. have been.

The mind's ability to heal the body is debated by health professionals but most people believe that the mind can influence the body's immune system.

When I read Martin Seliman's book Learned Optimism I felt that the field of Positive Psychology had specific applications to my struggle with multiple myeloma.

In Learned Optimism, Dr. Seligman explains how a person can learn to be optimistic. Studies show that optimistic people live longer. By taking a test in the book to evaluate my level of optimism, I determined that I was slightly pessimistic in my outlook on life. No surprise here after a cancer diagnosis and two years of chemotherapy and radiation that failed to stop my cancer.

Over the following months and years based on Martin Seligman's ideas I have learned to be more optimistic in my outlook while learning to manage my health. I firmly believe that taking responsibility for my health (rather than expecting my doctors to be responsible for my health) became a key component of my multiple myeloma cure.

This is the link to the Authentic Happiness website. In addition to general information about the field of positive psychology, it contains links to questionaires and surveys to give you insite into your own personality.

This is a link to positive psychology resources such as books, journals and links to web sites.

Below is an article from the Wall Street Journal discussing positive psychology and its application to an individual undergoing therapy.

Therapy That Keeps
On the Sunny Side of Life
Rising Number of Therapists
Focus on the Positive Instead
Of Bad Parents, Other Demons
By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN
September 26, 2006

When Margaret Smith felt worried or sad, she did what many people do. She
took antidepressants or talked to a therapist about issues that were
bothering her: her divorce, her shyness, how her mother was depressed when
she was growing up.

But neither the drugs nor the sessions made her feel much better. So when
Ms. Smith started feeling anxious after moving to Boston last year, she
decided to try a different type of therapy. Once a week for a year, she met
with a psychologist to talk about the good things in her life, including her
appreciation for Gustav Klimt's art and her gratitude for her father, who
worked for decades at a grinding job to support his family.

"I thought it would be better to focus on my strengths, instead of the same
old stuff of how I was inadequate or my family was inadequate," says Ms.
Smith, a 45-year-old homemaker who now lives in Los Angeles. She says she
sometimes still feels anxious, but the therapy sessions focusing on the
positive helped her control her emotions, and she has fewer bad moods. "If
you focus on what makes you feel good or things you're good at, it's logical
you would feel better," she says.

For decades, many therapists have treated mental disorders such as
depression with medication and talk therapies that often concentrate on
family relationships and how they affect current problems. But some
psychology experts worried that this approach addressed only half of the
equation -- focusing on negative feelings, while ignoring the positives that
help people feel happy. Now a small but increasing number of therapists are
employing an emerging discipline known as "positive psychology." The
treatment focuses primarily on the affirmative aspects of a patient's life
with the goal of helping them feel more optimistic and fulfilled.

The new techniques often involve assessing a patient's strengths, such as
creativity or humor, and implementing them in everyday life. The result can
be small actions like taking a class or larger decisions like changing jobs.
The positive approach is being used with everyone from depressed patients
and anorexics to disaster victims and veterans returning from war with
post-traumatic stress disorder. Increasingly, people who have no mental
illness or disorder -- who function well but simply want to function better
-- are giving the upbeat method a try.

Critics contend that positive therapy simply repackages ideas that have been
around for a long time in other forms, such as the humanistic-psychology
movement of the 1960s and '70s, or even Buddhism. And they bristle that the
very label "positive therapy" implies that other types of therapies are
negative.

"It's great if you can increase people's positive emotions, but this doesn't
get rid of their negative ones," says Julie Norem, professor of psychology
at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass. "The important thing is that people
learn to manage them."

Proponents of the new techniques -- typically licensed psychologists, who
must have a Ph.D. to practice -- say they are careful to deal with any
negative feelings a client brings up. And some integrate positive techniques
with other forms of therapy or a referral for medication, especially with
clients diagnosed with a mental disorder such as depression.

The technique isn't for everyone, positive psychologists say. Patients with
severe mental illness such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia will need
help working through their problems before they can learn to be positive.
For patients who do seek positive therapy and have a diagnosed disorder,
sessions are typically covered by insurance as treatment by a psychologist.

Growing Academic Field

The field of positive psychology was created in 1998 when Martin Seligman, a
psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, became president of
the American Psychological Association. During his year in office he made it
his goal to persuade others in his profession to focus more on the traits
and conditions that help people feel happy. He has founded the Positive
Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and organized
conferences in the nascent field. Today, the field is being broadly studied,
and about 200 positive psychology classes have popped up at universities. At
Harvard, "Positive Psychology" was the most popular elective class last
spring, with more than 800 undergraduates enrolled.

As positive psychology has taken off as an academic discipline,
psychologists have developed therapeutic techniques to put the ideas into
clinical practice. Currently there is no requirement for specialized
training in this area of psychology. But positive psychologists have created
assessment tests to determine strengths and positive traits, such as
optimism, as well as exercises to increase these traits, such as making
lists of good things that have happened. (Many can be found on two Web
sites: www.authentichappiness.or... and www.reflectivehappiness.c....)

There are several new textbooks that aim to train therapists in positive
techniques. Last year the University of Pennsylvania created a master's
program in applied positive psychology, and received 100 applications for 35
slots. And Mclean Hospital in Belmont, Mass., a Harvard affiliate that
specializes in psychiatry, is in the process of creating the Coaching
Psychology Institute: Positive Psychology in Action, to train therapists and
other health-care providers.

Noting the Positive

"The main thing is to teach people to put more positive experiences in their
day, to appreciate and notice these experiences," says Carol Kauffman, a
positive therapist and assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical
School. Dr. Kauffman says one of the many places she uses positive therapy
is her group for women with eating disorders. After patients identify
themselves and their disorder, Dr. Kauffman goes around the circle again and
has them name something positive about their lives. "Now the bulimic says
she is a senior at Radcliffe and won a prize and really loves beauty," says
Dr. Kauffman. It makes them feel "empowered."

Tayyab Rashid, a psychologist in Toronto, has developed a 12- to 14-session
therapy program that begins by assessing the person's strengths and
symptoms. Then each week he discusses a specific issue with the client, such
as the power of gratitude: He may have them write a thankful letter to
someone in their lives, which he says helps build relationships in a
positive way. In another assignment, the "family strength tree," the client
asks each family member to take a questionnaire about his or her strengths
and holds a family conference to discuss them.

Positive therapy "is not about candy and chocolates and vacations," says Dr.
Rashid, who has a practice in Toronto. "It's about working on your
strengths, and there are no short cuts."

Heidi Hall, an editor at the Tampa Tribune, turned to a positive
psychologist to learn to be a better manager at work and to be happier. She
says he assigned her several exercises. In one, she wrote a letter
expressing forgiveness to someone who had wronged her. She chose her
landlord, who had charged her $500 for damage she says wasn't her fault. "I
had a lot of anger and sense of injustice," says Ms. Hall, 36 years old. The
letter helped her realize "you are only hurting yourself."

Psychologists in the field believe positive therapy has far-ranging uses,
including helping people who may not need treatment in a traditional sense.
For people who don't have a diagnosis of a mental disorder, the sessions are
often considered "coaching" and likely wouldn't be covered by insurance. The
cost varies, but may generally run $100 to $250 per session.

Each week business executive Robin Cole meets with a positive coach --
psychologist Paul Lloyd. Mr. Cole says he met Dr. Lloyd through business
connections and became intrigued with the idea that positive-therapy
techniques could improve his leadership at work. Dr. Lloyd coaches him on
such topics as how to frame bad events in a positive context. Mr. Cole, 61,
who is the president of Rite Group, an office-technology company in Cape
Girardeau, Mo., also performs certain exercises at home. In one recent
assignment, he identified an experience he savors -- his Saturday morning
ritual of making coffee and biscuits -- and wrote a short essay about it.

Impact on the Job

Mr. Cole says he also anonymously surveys his employees each quarter about
their contentment at work, to identify business issues to work on with his
coach. He says the techniques he has learned have "contributed to a stronger
outlook in the way I conduct myself personally and in the way I now lead my
business."

The American Red Cross is utilizing some positive-psychology techniques. The
agency recently revised the manual it hands out to psychologists and other
mental-health experts who volunteer to work with victims of a disaster,
encouraging them to help people focus on how they survived, as opposed to
just going over the trauma that occurred. "You are reinforcing the coping
skills rather than the horror of the experience," says Susan Allstetter
Neufeldt, a retired psychologist from Santa Barbara, who volunteered with
the Red Cross in Dallas and New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. "I would
tell people that if they could get three laughs a day they were helping
themselves."