The core ingredients of happiness. Psychologist Martin Seligman believes that
people need to work with three components of happiness: 1) getting more pleasure out of
life, 2) becoming more engaged in what you do, and 3) finding ways to make your life more
meaningful.
Seligman cites the research of Hungarian-born psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on
how we create a positive state of well-being or "being in the flow" by feeling
completely engaged in pursuits that are creative, playful, or meaningful.
Seligman believes that for greatest happiness people need to find strengths and virtues
and apply them in everyday life. He helps people determine their core values and strengths
by offering a free test at his website, www.authentichappiness.com. He feels that
interpersonal qualities such as kindness, gratitude and capacity for love contribute more
to happiness than cerebral virtues such as love of learning and curiosity.
Experiencing self. Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman finds that actual
experience and memories operate on different tracks and affect happiness in different
ways. To construct a narrative of our lives and make sense of our experience, we focus on
the most intense moments or the way an experience ends.
Kahneman feels that well-being is a product of "focal time" or how we direct
our attention. Our experiencing self prefers the pleasure of absorbing events or
captivating interactions while our evaluating self prefers the things that make life
easier or that we are familiar with.
His basic suggestion for happiness is that we spend our time, money and attention on
the day-to-day enjoyment of life and by making choices to be in activities that engage
rather than numb our minds.
Remembering self. Seligman feels the "remembering" self as a surer
pathway to happiness. To him, memories are more than the sum total of experiences. Happy,
satisfied lives depend more on how we evaluate experience in terms of depth of involvement
and meaning than just the pleasurable quality of the moment.
Which is better? Eager anticipation and contentment with life or finding joy in the
moment. Both may be right. They both include active engagement; to live in the moment and
to live with purpose.
Take this test. Read the following five statements from the Satisfaction of Life
scale developed by University of Illinois psychologist Edward Diener. Then use a 1-to-7
scale to rate your level of agreement with 1 being not at all true and 7 being absolutely
true.
1. In most ways my life is close to ideal.
2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
3. I am satisfied with my life.
4. So far I have gotten the most important things I want in life.
5. If I could live my life over, I would change almost nothing.
Scoring: 31-35: Extremely satisfied with life; 26 to 30: very satisfied; 21 to 25
satisfied; 20 is the neutral point; 15 to 19: slightly dissatisfied; 10 to 14:
dissatisfied; 5 to 9: very dissatisfied.
Research findings. Diener’s research findings show that once you get enough
money (up to about $50,000 in the US) to enjoy the ordinary pleasures of middle class
life, more money does little to raise life satisfaction. If making money interferes with
vacations, leisure time, exercise, volunteering, and an active social life then it can
detract from happiness.
Education and high IQ don’t contribute much to happiness.
Older people are happier than younger people. Our aging brain urges us to pay more
attention to good things and to focus on the moment.
Married people are generally happier than singles and happily married couples are the
happiest.
Balmy weather is irrelevant to happiness though most Californians and envious
Midwesterners believe otherwise.
Religious faith contributes to happiness by giving meaning to life and by providing a
network of social support network.
Diener’s biggest finding was that commitment to friends and family and spending
time with them are important to happiness. Social skills, close interpersonal ties and
social support are vital to happiness.
Can we make ourselves happier? University of Minnesota researcher, David Lykken
has determined we have a happiness "set" point, fixed by temperament and early
life experiences. Thrilling accomplishment, joyful experiences or unmitigated tragedy may
alter our feelings of well-being for a while but we generally settle back to our set
point.
We overestimate the impact of good events and underestimate how resilient we are when
we deal with life’s traumas. Lykken feels that only 10 to 15 percent of our
subjective well-being may be under our control.
Two events knock people persistently below their set point; widowhood and job loss. It
takes a widow five to eight years to regain her previous sense of well-being. Effects of
job loss have an impact long after an individual has returned to the work force.
University of California at Riverside psychologist Sonia Lyubomirsky suggests the
following strategies to consciously raise our happiness set point.
1. Count your blessings. 2. Practice acts of kindness. 3. Savor life’s joys. 4.
Express gratitude and appreciation frequently to key individuals in your life. 5. Learn to
forgive and let go. 6. Invest time and energy in friends and family. Feeling connected to
other people is essential. 7. Take care of your body. 8. Develop strategies for finding
meaning and coping with stress and hard times.