Primer on positive psychology by Martin Seligman

Tonight I viewed Martin Seligman's excellent 2004 TED lecture on positive psychology. Seligman introduced his talk by bemoaning the many decades during which psychology utilized only the "disease model," which he described as "Spot the loon." Some good things came of it, of course. Sullivan mentions that we can now treat many psychological illnesses (admitted only a small percentage all of them) and we can sometimes make miserable people less miserable. The disease model ignored normal people and high talent people, however. It also failed to help normal functioning people to become happier. Seligman carefully made the point that the skill set for avoiding dysfunction is dramatically different than the skills necessary for improving happiness. The concerns of positive psychology take over where the disease model left off. Positive psychology concerns both human strengths and human weaknesses. It includes building up the best things in life as well as preparing the worst. It includes helping to make the lives of normal people more fulfilling and nurturing talent (including genius). Positive psychology seeks to do all these things, to complement psychology's traditional aim of healing pathology. But what is happiness? Based on Seligman's research, happiness comes in three flavors (the following is from Seligman's website, Authentic Happiness, where you can take various self-tests at this site to determine your level of happiness):

First The Pleasant Life, consisting in having as many pleasures as possible and having the skills to amplify the pleasures. This is, of course, the only true kind of happiness on the Hollywood view. Second, The Good Life, which consists in knowing what your signature strengths are, and then recrafting your work, love, friendship, leisure and parenting to use those strengths to have more flow in life. Third, The Meaningful Life, which consists of using your signature strengths in the service of something that you believe is larger than you are.
For another basic outline of these approaches, see here. Traditionally, the first of these three forms of happiness, Pleasant Life (also called "pleasant emotion") was considered to be the entirety of happiness. Examples include social relationships, backrubs, a full stomach, orgasms, hobbies and entertainment. Pleasant Life activities invoke a form of happiness that consists of a "raw feeling" that is obvious--you know when it's happening. Pleasant Life feelings can be generated by spending time with others. Those who like to spend considerable time alone (I know one of them) have often been perceived as less happy. That characterization is not necessarily accurate, though, once we consider the two other basic forms of happiness. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingPrimer on positive psychology by Martin Seligman

Striving to live in the moment

Information swirls about that it disorients us and even paralyzes us, and not just during elections. Those of us who systematically try to stay well-informed are especially vulnerable. Media outlets are always working hard to steal our attention with all of those new products and stories and they do a great job of it. Television is especially good at hypnotizing us with constant scene changes, including a nonstop parade of bright shiny shallow-minded things. Because of this special power of television to mindlessly consume us, I’ve warned that it is critically important to pull the plug on television. “Just say “no” to TV. Do it for your country.” Even those of us who are able to pull ourselves away from television are subjected to a constant stream of distractions ranging from work pressures, home repairs social obligations and numerous flavors of interruptions. These distractions often yank me away from things I consider important, things (including my children) that are often right in front of my nose. In fact, if I had to sum up my biggest frustration in life, it’s that I end up doing far too many things I don’t really enjoy in order to do the things I treasure. Quite often, though, we are contributors to our problem. For instance, we end up choosing to do non-important urgent-seeming things instead of spending time on things we truly consider important. How could that be? This issue was well-described by Steven Covey, who illustrated the problem with a 2 by 2 matrix of the types of tasks we face. The two variables are importance and urgency. All of us readily attend to those things that are both important and urgent and all of us ignore those things that are not important and not urgent. We struggle, though, when it comes to prioritizing the two remaining types of tasks Many of us all-too-willingly attend to those tasks that are urgent but not important, ignoring those things that are important but not urgent. Recognizing this problem is the first step toward solving it.

Continue ReadingStriving to live in the moment