I FEEL HAPPY...OH, SO HAPPY:

Searching for a happiness strategy: The people who enjoy life tend to make the most of the moment -- and their strengths. (Benedict Carey, 12/09/02, LATimes)

Maybe there's a science to happiness. A set of principles we could study, master, then apply to the disappointments, disasters and dirty dishes in our own lives. Whether gloomy by nature or not, we'd at least have some emotional hydraulics to lift ourselves out of despair after the inevitable arguments at home, mess-ups at work, personal insults. We might even learn how to enjoy ourselves and thrive doing work we thought miserable.

Martin Seligman, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, is determined to find the principles that underlie the good life. Seligman is a driving force behind positive psychology, the growing effort among sociologists, economists and other social scientists to study how humans succeed, develop virtue and achieve fulfillment. [...]

Seligman has tried to provide a blueprint. To make ourselves happier, he argues, we need to learn two important skills: how to mind our thoughts, moment to moment. And how to forget ourselves altogether.

In previous work, Seligman has described an effective technique for countering what he refers to as "catastrophic thoughts." The trick is first to recognize the despairing idea -- "I'm the weakest employee in the department, and I'm probably going to get fired" -- and then check it against real evidence, as if the statement were being uttered by another person trying to make you miserable. "Did anyone actually say I was doing consistently poor work? So my last project fell apart -- yet the one before that was praised highly. Given the expectations, everyone in the department is struggling."

By arguing with yourself in this way, Seligman has shown, you can separate beliefs from facts, defusing many pessimistic assumptions by editing them according to logic and evidence. In effect, you act as your own therapist, talking hard sense to yourself precisely when your thoughts begin to darken. The same kind of self-disputing can be applied to almost any variety of gloominess.

Measuring your potential for happiness: In this quiz, qualities such as integrity and perseverance have a lot to do with how fulfilling your life can be. (Benedict Carey, December 9, 2002, LA Times)

Answer whether the A statements are: very much like me (5 points); like me (4 points); neutral (3); unlike me (2); or very much unlike me (1). For the B statements, reverse the scoring, so that very much like me is 1 point, and very much unlike me is 5 points.

Curiosity:

A) "I am always curious about the world."

B) "I am easily bored." [...]

Scores of 9 or 10 in any specific category will usually identify one of our strengths, though not always, Seligman says.

The complete questionnaire appears on Seligman's Web site.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 16, 2002 7:51 PM