Yesterday, amid much hype, TED came to Sydney. (Well- it didn’t get as much hype as Oprah did, but it did get a four-page wrap-around in the Sydney Morning Herald!) TED began in 1984 as a technology, entertainment and design conference but has become a forum bringing together people from an infinite range of backgrounds who all have “ideas worth sharing”. Visit TED.com to see what I mean. When I visited the site, to see what all the fuss was about, I came across a talk by Martin Seligman, the founder of the Positive Psychology movement and former President of the American Psychological Association. It was great to be reminded of Seligman’s work on happiness – I saw him speak several years ago in Sydney and found him inspiring. You can watch Seligman’s presentation on TED.com, however I thought I’d share a few ideas of his with you here.
Seligman and his colleagues have identified three types of happy life; The Pleasant Life, The Good Life, and the Meaningful Life.
The Pleasant Life
The first type of happy life is the one that most people think of – lots of positive emotion, fun, smiling and laughter. People who pursue this type of life tend to be hedonistic, filling their lives with lots of “stuff” and lots of pleasurable activities. The bad news for people following this path is that this type of happiness turns out to be pretty much determined by genetics, and is extremely resistant to change. It’s a trait that the positive psychologists call “positive affectivity” and is personified by Cameron Diaz or Goldie Hawn, with their big smiles, trigger-happy laughter and the sense that every one of their days is a hilarious fun-fest. (Who wouldn’t want to go on a road-trip with Cameron?) However, the mistake we make is assuming that people who are high on the positive affectivity scale must be “happy”, because studies show that “the pleasant life” is only very marginally related to life satisfaction. It seems that people choosing to pursue only the pleasant life are doubly unlucky; chasing all that pleasure doesn’t change the underlying personality factor, and even if it did, that wouldn’t result in a greater sense of life satisfaction. The good news is, there is something that does.
The Good Life
The fundamental concept of the good life is engagement. Seligman and his colleagues have found that, when people are deeply involved in an activity which utilises their strengths and skills, they can enter a state of “flow”, in which time is meaningless and self-consciousness non-existent. For example, an athlete may experience flow and call it being “in the zone”, where the time goes by in an instant, and they feel strong, and capable of anything. Others may experience it playing music, or doing a job they love. Positive psychologists have found that people who experience flow often have a much greater sense of life satisfaction, or “happiness” than the rest of us. So how do you get it? First, find out what your strengths are. The Character Strengths survey, at http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu, can help with that, if you’re not sure what yours are (and you have some time to spare!) Then, recraft your life so that you utilise your strengths at every opportunity. Your job, your relationships, your leisure activities, the way you interact with your children, according to Seligman, are all aspects of your life that you could potentially find more satisfying by bringing your strengths to bear. As opposed to the hedonistic happiness enjoyed by those pursuing the “pleasant life”, the “good life” has been shown to be a much greater indicator of life satisfaction. A quick look at the TED website will show you many, many people, so deeply engaged in their work or their hobbies, that they can inspire people around the world by talking about what they do on video. It’s a reasonable bet that these people experience flow on a day-to-day basis. These people have also become part of something bigger then themselves, which is the criteria for the next type of happy life; the Meaningful Life.
The Meaningful Life
The meaningful life consists of applying your strengths in the service of something that you feel is greater than yourself. It might be sharing your knowledge with others, or utilising your ability for compassion to work with the homeless, or it might be using your sense of humour to make sick children laugh. Or it could be by applying your organisational skills to run the local branch of a professional association, or your artistic ability to beautify your local area, or your mechanical skills to assist a project at your local Men’s Shed ( http://www.mensshed.org). The benefit of this type of happiness is that it takes the concept a step outside the subjective self and into the realm of the tangible, “real world”, becoming something that we all benefit from.
So it seems that Seligman’s views on how to achieve happiness could be summarised thus;
Step 1. Find out what you’re good at.
Step 2. Do it, a lot.
Step 3. Share it.
But I bet the people at TED already knew that!
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