From Paralyzed to Catalyzed: Supporting Adolescent Girls Through Positive Psychology Coaching

This paper is written to identify strategic interventions, born from positive psychology research, which can aid youth coaches in achieving desired positive outcomes including increased optimism, strong social connections and healthy self confidence. Coaching is an ideal platform for the application of positive psychology. Adolescent coaching, an increasingly popular life coaching niche, provides teen girls with an opportunity to maximize their potential and improve their overall wellbeing through vision, action and accountability. This paper addresses the ways in which teen girl coaches can integrate positive psychology research and interventions into private and group coaching sessions, in order to affect lasting positive change on girls’ self-esteem, friendships, and future orientation.