Jared Warren combined his interest in landscape photography with a positive psychology curriculum he developed at Brigham Young University to help students achieve happiness and strive for better mental health.
Positive psychology is a science of wellbeing, and photography is a context in which many positive psychology principles can be expressed, Warren explained.
“I was working a lot of hours, felt kind of stressed and I didn’t have a lot of balance in my life,” Warren said. “A number of things were happening at the same time.”
He began reading a lot of positive psychology literature in 2012, such as Sonja Lyubomirsky's "The How of Happiness," and bought a camera to document his life. One day, he decided to wake up early and take a trip to Bryce Canyon National Park and photograph the sunrise but almost missed it due to an unfortunate series of events, he explained.
“I’m feeling kind of stressed, but I find this parking area that would lead to an overlook. So, I hustle, grab my gear, sprint out to the edge of this overlook at Bryce Canyon, and just in time I set up my tripod and my camera,” Warren said. “The sun starts to rise, and the canyon lights up in this surreal, just indescribably beautiful glow, and I was amazed.”
In that moment, Warren noted some of the things he had been reading about in Lyubomirsky’s book about flow experiences, aspects of mindfulness, savoring the present moment and deep gratitude.
“It was like a switch sort of flipped in my mind where I was like, ‘Okay, I need more of this,’” he said.
Mindfulness, interconnectedness, flow, gratitude, savoring and many more topics are included in the curriculum, Warren explained.
“It’s one of those things that you can reflect back on in any stage of life, especially knowing he’s done it to help others have a better and more enjoyable life,” former student Nathan Mackey said. “He was actually invested in helping students understand how their mental health could impact their way of life.”
According to Mackey, Warren shared an experience in class of how difficult it was to capture a photo at Delicate Arch.
“It was teaching all of us that there are going to be hard times in life,” he said, “but as you sit and actually work at something, you’re going to be able to get the thing you want.”
Even when Warren's drone crashed on the side of a mountain, he was still able to look at the positive side of things, Mackey added.
“He’s a great practitioner of everything that he preaches,” Katelyn Jackman said, a current graduate student at BYU who works in Warren’s research lab. “He is an embodiment of what a life can look like lived with the principles of positive psychology.”
It only takes 20 minutes a day — at least — to practice positive psychology, whether it’s through yoga, a guided meditation app, or finding a comfortable position on the couch, Jackman explained.
“Mindfulness helps me become more aware of when I might be distracted or when anxiety might be pulling my attention away from being present in my relationships,” she said. “When I’m regularly practicing mindfulness, I’m better able to get into tasks and focus on what’s in the present moment.”
To learn more about positive psychology and Warren’s curriculum, visit his website, My Best Self 101. To view more of Warren’s landscape photography, click here.