When Dr. Martin Seligman was elected President of the American Psychological Association in 1998, he promoted an initiative in psychology to study what makes people happy along with the traditional subject of what makes people sick. This field of study became known as Positive Psychology. In his book, Flourish, Seligman presents his theory of what makes people happy (2011). It consists of five practices that are memorialized by the pneumonic “PERMA.”
Positive Emotions
Cultivate positive emotions. Pursue activities that bring you happiness and life satisfaction. (We’ve talked about these activities above in the sections on Maslow and Bernanke.) It also means doing gratitude exercises, such as listing three things you are grateful for each day before you go to sleep.
Engagement
Deep engagement in an activity is known as flow. In his 2011 book, Seligman provides a series of questions so that you can determine if you were in a flow:
- Did time stop for you?
- Were you completely absorbed by the task?
- Did you lose self-consciousness?
According to the principles of Positive Psychology, the way to become engaged in your work is to find a career that uses your signature character strengths (see Chapter 1). You can find your Signature Character Strengths by taking the questionnaire VIA Survey of Character Strengths on the Authentic Happiness website.
Relationships
Specifically, we should focus on positive relationships. As Bernanke said, friends and family give us the greatest life satisfaction, and you can practice daily reminders that you are grateful for friends and family. However, it is not just what your friends and family can do to make you happy. Maslow’s revised hierarchy places transcendence at the top. Transcendence is achieved by activities that focus on helping others reach life satisfaction and on pursuing your spiritual virtues. According to Seligman, positive relationships require both the capacity to love and the capacity to be loved.
Meaning
Meaning is belonging to and serving something bigger than yourself. . It can be devotion to your family, to a cause, or a spiritual belief. Meaning has both a subjective motivation (the feeling we get) and an objective motivation (that caring for others is an important virtue). Psychologist Vicktor E. Frankl, in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, claims that our quest for meaning in our lives is one of the fundamental human aspirations (2006). According to Frankl, having meaning in our lives is so important that it can make the difference between life and death. During the Holocaust, Frankl was interned in a concentration camp. He reports in his book that among seemingly equally healthy prisoners in the camp, those who had expressed a belief in a meaning to life or belief in a higher power survived while those who did not see any meaning in life disproportionately perished (2006).
Accomplishment
People, according to Seligman, pursue accomplishment, achievement, success and mastery for its own sake (2011). Some only care about winning, measured by the number of defeated opponents or the amount of money in their bank account. Some, on the other hand, pursue accomplishment to feel competent or to achieve their full potential. In Maslow’s Hierarchy, this is reflected in the Need for Esteem and the Need for Self-Actualization. Hopefully, you see by now the common threads between Maslow, Bernanke and Seligman as to what gives us happiness and well-being. Due to hedonic adaptation, we know that it certainly is not about having more money. Instead, the most important factor for achieving well-being is developing positive relationships and spending time with family and friends.