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Contents

A science of satisfaction

History of positive psychology

Positive emotions and the brain

Is happiness always good?

Defining and measuring happiness

Is it genetic?

Why pleasure fades

The happiness/health connection

What makes you happy?

Testing your happiness level

Your strengths and virtues

Understanding personal character

Defining virtues and strengths

Gratitude

Studying gratitude

Counting your blessings

Savoring pleasure

Happiness and choice

Flow: Becoming more engaged

Matching your skill level

Flow at work

How to get in the flow

SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: Mindfulness

Self-compassion

What is self-compassion?

The benefits of self-compassion

The meaningful life

Do unto others

When times are tough

Positive psychology in psychotherapy

Finding assistance

Taking positive psychology beyond the individual

Positive relationships

Positive communities

Resources

Glossary

Dear Reader,

Human beings have always wanted to be happy. Even the U.S. Declaration of Independence lists “the pursuit of happiness” as among our inalienable rights. Unfortunately, our forefathers provided no guidance about how to actually find happiness—and we still often don’t know where to look.

Today’s standard medical approach to mental health emphasizes treating mental disorders and helping troubled people feel less distressed. But for people without a diagnosable mental illness, psychiatry texts offer little guidance for living a happier, more satisfying life.

The newer field of positive psychology offers an alternative. It has a broader definition of mental health: not just treating mental illness, but helping everyone to capitalize on their strengths, heighten their awareness, and develop the wisdom needed to live a more fulfilling life. The exciting news is that researchers are finding effective ways to help make this happen.

This report explores both time-tested and modern avenues to happiness. Often, these paths lead to different places than you might expect. Instead of a new car, a prestigious honor, or an invitation to a celebrity party—things that bring an initial thrill that quickly fades—paths to more lasting satisfaction lie elsewhere.

Some research results point in surprising new directions, while other findings echo advice heard from wise elders and religious teachers across cultures and centuries. As you embark on this process, enjoy the journey. Pursue happiness lightly, let it arise naturally, and don’t expect to find it once and for all. It turns out that happiness is cultivated through small choices made over a lifetime.

Sincerely,

Ronald D. Siegel, Psy.D.
Medical Editor

A science of satisfaction

What is good mental health? Is it simply the absence of a disorder such as depression, anxiety, or phobia? Until recently, the study of mental health focused primarily on treating mental illness and paid scant attention to the development of meaning, fulfillment, positive emotion, and connection—all of which are crucial to the quality of daily life.

Positive psychology is a unifying term that encompasses the study of positive emotions, full engagement in activities, virtuous personal characteristics, and paths to fulfillment and meaning in life. It also investigates how relationships and institutions can support the quest for increased satisfaction and meaning. Positive psychology doesn’t consider the traditional approach of treating mental illness to be misguided. Rather, it supplements the study of mental disorders and their treatment, placing attention on strengths as well as weaknesses, and taking what has been learned about psychological science and applying it to the goal of greater happiness and meaning.

What if you don’t have a psychological disorder but you’d like to improve your emotional state, find more meaning in your life, or fulfill your potential? In recent years, the growth of the field of positive psychology has expanded the body of scientific evidence, the number of mental health professionals, and the number of individuals who are benefiting from techniques and therapies aimed at developing a positive outlook that improves the quality of their daily lives. The burgeoning field of positive psychology addresses questions of happiness, vitality, and meaning in life as worthy of serious scientific research.

History of positive psychology

Positive psychology is certainly not the first attempt to examine the positive aspects of human experience. Philosophers from the ancient Greeks onward have promoted various schools of thought on how to find happiness and fulfillment. Aristotle believed that happiness, which he called eudaimonia (eudemonia in English), is achieved through knowing your true self and acting in accordance with your virtues. Epicurus and the hedonists believed in reaching happiness by maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, while the stoics extolled the value of remaining objective, unswayed by either pleasure or pain.

Positive psychology attempts to move beyond the treatment of mental illness to study the basis of positive human emotion, including its neurological, psychological, and physiological aspects.

Virtually all of the world’s religions offer paths to inner peace, meaning, and fulfillment. Buddhism, one of the world’s ancient religions, teaches that a person can find psychological freedom and inner peace through recognizing the interconnectedness of all things, transcending the illusion of a separate self, and coming to accept the inevitability of change. Other major religious traditions, including those of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, have for many centuries embraced the concept that happiness and rewards result from following God’s will as revealed in scripture. The utilitarian philosophers of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, including John Stuart Mill, believed that moral actions are those which maximize happiness—not for the individual, but for the greatest number of people. At the same time, other schools of thought have been more individualistic. The Romantics, for example, valued individual emotional expression and high passion.

Whether or not they used the term positive psychology, the work of many current and past psychologists falls under its umbrella. For example, during a long career at Harvard, the psychologist William James was fascinated by whether and how transcendent and mystical experiences help people live better, fuller lives.

Still, most of 20^th-century psychiatry and psychology has worked within a medical model with a goal of moving people from painful mental states to more neutral ones. Sigmund Freud, for example, believed that our civilized actions stem not from lofty motives but from our attempts to repress a bubbling cauldron of unconscious conflicts, such as infantile sexual and aggressive urges. The therapy Freud developed, psychoanalysis, required a major commitment—typically several hours a week. Even so, Freud’s goals for it were modest: to turn “hysterical misery into ordinary human unhappiness.”

Researchers seek to understand positive emotions, psychological strengths, and optimal human functioning, and to use that knowledge to assist people in their quest for joy and fulfillment.

Before the end of World War II, psychotherapy was largely the province of medical doctors specializing in psychiatry. After the war, when many soldiers returned from combat with mental health problems, the Veterans Administration faced a shortage of therapists. The agency funded the retraining of psychologists to do clinical work with traumatized vets and helped establish doctoral programs in clinical psychology.

Clinical psychology quickly became the largest psychological discipline. It, too, operated largely on a medical model, with the aim of treating mental illness. However beneficial this was, some psychologists and other mental health professionals weren’t satisfied with the field’s predominant focus on treating mental illness, alleviating the effects of psychological trauma, and interrupting maladaptive behavior patterns.

Instead, these new thinkers sought to understand positive emotions, psychological strengths, and optimal human functioning, and to use that knowledge to assist people in their quest for joy and fulfillment. Abraham Maslow is credited with coining the term positive psychology in the 1950s. He introduced the concept of “self-actualization,” a yearning for growth and meaning in life that some people pursue after their more basic needs—such as food and safety—have been met (see Figure 1).

University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman broke new ground in the 1990s with his concept of “learned optimism,” widely considered a precursor to today’s study of happiness. Learned optimism was an outgrowth of Seligman’s earlier work on the concept of “learned helplessness,” the apathy and depression that can ensue when people or animals are placed in aversive situations where they have little control (like a baby whose cries are never answered). Seligman described optimism as a trait of most happy people, and found that optimism could be nurtured by teaching people to challenge their patterns of negative thinking and to appreciate their strengths. This idea that people can become happier by bolstering and using their inherent strengths is central to positive psychology.

—Stumbling on Happiness