"Who am I?" Or "I wish I knew what I want in my life!" Or "Why is that person so difficult to understand?" We often think about these questions and feel lost. What if someone had taught us how to answer these questions and how to look deep into ourselves to know what we want or to understand others? That's where Psychology comes into play. (No you won't learn how to read minds)

Psychology- the science of human mind and behaviour. This is the subject that attempts to describe, explain and predict to some extent our behaviour (ie our overt or observable action) and the internal (covert) processes that are involved in all mental activities (thinking, feeling, planning, reasoning, decision making, memorizing). 

Psychology is not just another subject that you cram from books and spill out on answer sheets. Studying psychology is a rewarding experience in itself, it is a journey to becoming a responsible, empathetic and kind human being possessing the ability to think rationally and make informed decisions. Isn't that everything we want everyone to be?

Psychology employees the biopsychosocial model in studying mental health. The interaction between biological (body), psychological (mental) and social (our place in the society) factors is studied to determine the cause, manifestation and outcome of wellness and disease. This simply means that both our internal and external environment (the functioning of our brain and body, our cognition and interaction with and influence of the society) are being taken into consideration as both of these collectively shape and influence us. 

Abnormal psychology: the branch of psychology that everyone is familiar with, deals with understanding the causes and symptoms of abnormal behaviour and mental disorders and the various methods by which we can help those who suffer from them. But psychology is not at all limited to that. Other branches include:

Cognitive Psychology: that investigates internal mental processes, such as problem solving, memory, learning, and language. It looks at how people think, perceive, communicate, remember, and learn.

We can never really get rid of the process of learning, can we? This branch of psychology will help you make it a good experience and make learning easy. We rely on our memories everyday to lead our lives, everything that you can do is because you've learnt it and have stored it in your memory. Psychology has given a lot of easy ways to remember things and prevent them from getting lost. Our "problems" often haunt us and make us feel helpless. This subject can teach us to change our approach, look at problems systematically and find solutions. 

Positive Psychology: Positive psychology is the study of positive subjective experience (happiness, joy, inspiration, love), positive individual traits (gratitude, resilience, commission), to improve quality of life. Positive psychology focuses on both individual and societal well-being.There are many potential benefits of practicing positive psychology including an increase in self-esteem, improved relationships, and a greater outlook on life. Research in the realm of positive psychology has found that gratitude, social connection, and kindness are all important to living our best lives.

Developmental Psychology: This is the scientific study of systematic psychological changes that a person experiences over the life span. Focus of this branch is on people in every stage of life- infancy, childhood, adolescent, early, middle and late adulthood. How and when does a child learn to speak? When do we start thinking like adults? By what age should we have a sense of identity? What are the challenges of old age? What are the struggles of our parents? You'll find all the answers and more here.

Social Psychology: Social psychology uses scientific methods to understand how social influences impact human behavior. It seeks to explain how feelings, behavior, and thoughts are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other people. It will help you answer questions like- how do the significant people in our life influence us? Why do we change our opinions to match those of our peers? Will also help a lot in forming and maintaining healthy romantic relationships. 

Organisational Psychology: Also called occupational psychology. Aims at enabling companies to find more effective ways to function, and to understand how people and groups behave at work; learn about ways to improve effectiveness, efficiency, job satisfaction in employees, and employee retention. Even if you're working at a managerial level in an organization, knowing a bit of this can take you a long way.

Biopsychology: The scientific field of study that examines the relationships between biology and psychology, and how they influence behavior and cognition. For example, biopsychology examines topics such as how your eyes are able to inform your brain what you are reading, how the brain interprets this information, and how your brain communicates with your hand to move the mouse and click on different links. (If you want to understand the connection between your body and mind)

There are many different career options available to psychology degree holders, depending on your specialisations and interests, such as:

• Psychologist
• Psychotherapist
• Social worker
• Counselor
• Educational psychologist
• Human resource manager
• Teacher/ Professor
• Researcher
• Sports Psychologist
• Expressive arts therapist

Even if you don't want to make a career in this field, this is still a good subject to help you solve problems, big or small, of daily life and making your life fulfilling. Because every profession requires human interaction and understanding. Psychology will just help you work better in any professional setting.

Empathy, critical and analytical thinking, inquisitiveness are some of the qualities you will develop while studying psychology; all our important from a work pov and for life in general. 

The best thing about psychology is that it serves as a very powerful tool to understand yourself and others and shape your life the way you want to. It does give us the answer to every question. It makes us empowered to do so ourselves. Therefot, some of the areas in our life that Psychology can help us make better and more meaningful would be work, interpersonal relationships, knowing oneself, decision making, organizing our thoughts, gaining control over our moods, etc.

I know this is a long read but if you still made it to this sentence, I hope you are in love with the idea of studying psychology even if it's just for fun❤️