Authentic Happiness

Martin E. P. Seligman, PhD is a psychologist of long standing and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania. A past president of the American Psychology Association, Seligman has spent decades teaching, doing and researching abnormal psychology. In fact that is what the field was expected to do, address abnormal psychology in order to help people deal with their situations.

However, Dr. Seligman grew uncomfortable with this assignment of role for his field over a number of years. His focus increasingly fell on what makes people happy, and what elements of psychology are responsible for that? After years of probing and research Seligman published a book in 2002 entitled Authentic Happiness.

Seligman ends his book with this paragraph:

The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness. A life that does this is pregnant with meaning and if God comes at the end, such a life is sacred.”

The yin and yang of life provide both positive and negative elements of our personhood. Good and bad comes from these elements. Over time the bad may lead to poor mental health; but the opposite is true as well: strong positive mental health is the norm. Rather than always focusing on poor mental health, why not use the positive elements intentionally to elevate successful lives? In a nutshell that is the message of the book.

Interestingly, there are many positive programs that do just this. Most 12-step programs do this.  As practitioners of Alcoholics Anonymous come out of the fog of addiction to the brighter space of possibility and potential, happiness emerges; joy happens. It is a remarkable turnaround. Focus on the positive and explore personal strengths. The addictions ebb and strength prevails. Battling resentments to the background so the creative energy can shine, makes all the difference.

Optimism is its own reward. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said:

“If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

Keep moving. No one will do it for you. Each of us needs to do this work ourselves. It builds strength, resilience and the realization that we can do things we otherwise doubted we could. As Anonymous said:

“Anyone can give up; it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that’s true strength.”

It’s your life. What do you want to make of it? What are your passions to follow? What’s your dream for the long term future? Are you willing to work at it to make it come true? The Blogging for Change website offers this advice:

“A person’s most useful asset is not the head full of knowledge, but a heart full of love, and ear ready to listen, and a hand willing to help.”

And if each of us can do this with our own lives, just think what we can do together for our city, county, neighborhood, state and nation? The possibilities are endless. Each chooses what matters the most to them. Others focus on their primary issues. Together our work connects in the future somewhere distant in time, but still positively present in all of our lives. Utopia? Far from it! But something better than the problems we deal with now. Doing something about them is good for us. It builds strong mental health. And all from focusing on the positive rather than the negative.

How refreshing!

A final quote from the Internet:

“Three simple rules in life:

1.      If you do not go after what you want, you’ll never have it.

2.      If you do not ask, the answer will always be no.

3.      If you do not step forward, you will always be in the same place.”

June 19, 2012