How To Be Happy in the Guardian on Thursday tells the story of the “positive psychologists” who have been meeting at the Royal Society to discuss “the science of well-being”.
Leading light of this movement is Martin Seligman who is quoted in the article thus:
I used to think that all you had to do to get a happy person was get rid of the negatives in their life, but if that’s all you do, you don’t get a happy person, you get an empty person. You need the positives too
The article goes on with more of Seligman’s views:
He believes there are three routes to happiness, which he calls the “pleasant life”, the “good life” and the “meaningful life”. Some are better than others, although a mix of all three is ideal.
The pleasant life sees superficial pleasures as the key to happiness, and it is this that many people mistakenly pursue, he says. “The biggest mistake that people in the rich west make is to be enchanted with the Hollywood idea of happiness, which is really just giggling and smiling a lot,” he says. While a life bent on instant pleasure and gratification offers some degree of happiness, it is ultimately unsatisfying on its own, he says.
Money, it turns out, isn’t the answer either. Seligman believes that once we have enough to pay for life’s basics such as food and a roof over our heads, more money adds little to our happiness.
Seligman identifies signature strengths as keys to the good and meaningful life – applying these signature strengths to our lives leads to an increasing sense of flow – what he calls “the good life” – whilst he suggests that applying them to help others adds meaning to our lives.
There is (of course) a
Having filled in the quiz, it identifies my signature strengths as: (full results in extended entry)
All of which feel like a good fit to the things I enjoy, and when applied to work an equally good fit to the things I do well. So on this sample of one it makes sense!
Finally, is it scientific? There are critics who say the approach is not research-based. The last word belongs to Seligman:
If it’s not backed up by good scientific data, it will collapse like a house of cards, and it will deserve to
Maison Bertaux in Greek Street is a long-established patisserie in a seedy-ish bit of Soho. An unprepossessing shopfront admits you to a cramped room filled with four small tables where you can consume good coffee and the best French cakes in London… If you go there on a Sunday morning you will most likely be served by Metin – a friendly articulate guy perhaps early 50s. But on Thursday night Maison Bertaux was transformed into the Maison Bertaux Theatre Club, and Metin is the writer, director and lead actor of “You You”.
“How Do Scrum and CCPM Compare?”:https://weblog.halmacomber.com/2003_11_09_archive.html#106882243673415487 Hal Macomber posts comparison of the two methods by Clarke Ching
“MT Wiki”:https://wiki.virtualvenus.org Wiki for users of Moveable Type via Stuart Henshall
“Questions Matter”:https://denham.typepad.com/km/2003/11/questions_matte.html Denham Grey on the importance of questions
Had the hugely enjoyable experience of lunch with Dina Mehta, Flemming Funch and Julie Solheim-Roe. I can report another positive example of the transfer of blog-affinity into energy-filled real-life conversations – we ploughed straight in to a whole range of topics, including: Do the bloggers we gravitate to have similar values? The importance of “abundance” thinking in stimulating the open sharing of ideas The way in which young Indians are completely immersed in SMS and IM, email isn’t relevant
“Artima.com Interviews”:https://www.artima.com/intv/ Loads of useful stuff on programming
“Building a living glossary”:https://denham.typepad.com/km/2003/11/_building_a_liv.html Denham Grey on the power of building a common language A ‘living’ glossary where the community is actively involved in selection, collaborative writing, annealing and evangelism is a powerful way to create alignment, share meaning, improve communication, focus attention and help with making key distinctions.
“The Document Triangle”:https://www.bogieland.com/postings/post_interdependence.htm The interdependence of the structure, information and presentation dimensions of any document.
“Yet another blockquotes script”:https://www.1976design.com/blog/archive/2003/11/10/46/ Dunstan Orchard improves Simon Willison’s script by handling non-URL citations