Martin E. P.

Seligman

Can happiness be taught?

(Paraphrased in my own words)

After the World War 2, the field of psychology has largely focused on suffering. Psychologists now
measure complicated concepts like depression, anger, etc…. in a very precise manner. We have
discovered how these disorders develop, their genetics, their neurochemistry, and their psychological
hidden things. Best of all, we can relieve some of the disorders. Some of them were totally cured by
medications or psychotherapies and others were treated.

Unfortunately, for so many years interest on focusing on what makes people unhappy took more
importance and effort than what actually makes people happy. Regardless of that, this did not prevent
people to focus on their strength, not only to minimize their weakness and to live a life filled with
meaning.

Positive psychology consists of 3 things: the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life!
The pleasant life is about positive emotions.
The good life is about positive traits, and the most important including virtue and strength.
The meaningful lie is about positive institutions, such as strong families, democracy and free access to
information.
This is how positive psychology differs a lot from the traditional definition: mental disorders, anger,
depression , etc…

Martin , a psychologist , started teaching undergraduates an annual seminar to teach them how do
positive psychology leads to happiness.
The students read scientific literature on for example depression or helplessness, and they take a real
word homework exercise to and write every week.
This real-world homework includes: gratitude visits, or to transform a boring task by using a signature
strength, or to offer a gift of time to someone they care for.
the course begins with personal introductions that is not necessarily to be perfect. By allowing these
students to introduce themselves, it allows Martin to display their highest virtues and listening to
underlying positive motivations, strength and virtue rather than detecting underlying problems as
tradition psychology do.
The course then spends 4 meetings on what is scientifically documented about positive emotion:

 About the past ( e.g. Satisfaction)

 About the future (optimism, hope , etc..)
 About the present ( joy , ecstasy , etc.)

They learnt from this course about:

 Depressive realism ; happy people are less accurate than miserable people.
 They also learnt from this course that some people even if they are miserable or happy they
tend to return to their pre existing level of happiness or misery within a year because it is
heritable.
 They learnt also that it is not necessarily for people who are rich to be happy . it may be that
average people may be happier than rich ones.
 Educated people also may not be satisfied.
 Many people may be elected because they are optimistic not because of the campaign or
funding.
 Positive emotions lead to life longevity.
 Brain also plays a major role in happiness.

This scientific literature also focuses also on how to enhance positive emotions In the future.

 It focuses on positive emotions about the future , by focusing on optimism and how it can help
us minimizing depression , and improving our health .
 To achieve optimism , he started gave them practices on how to destroy bad thoughts.

This scientific literature also focuses also on how to enhance positive emotions In the Past = by
Gratitude.

 They do gratitude nights in order to increase their satisfactions about the past.

This scientific literature also focuses also on how to enhance positive emotions In the Present =
Pleasures.

To enhance pleasures , Martin gave them homework’s to go and experience present feelings like
savoring (mentally save moments) + mindfulness in order to teach them how to reach a pleasant life.

There is a huge difference between gratification and pleasure:

Because I use the word like in both gratitude and pleasure, we tend to thing that they are both the
same.

Pleasure consists of raw positive feeling, whereas gratitude, is the absence of thinking and feeling and is
the total immersion which usually blocks these feelings.

Also, even people who are not grateful could be happy.

The Ancient Greeks, insisted to know the difference between Pleasure and Gratification. .

For Aristotle:

 Happiness= eudaimonia, differs from pleasure. they are parallel to each other. They are like how
grace is parallel to dancing and not separate.
 Happiness of Contemplation:
What is contemplation:
It is choosing between 2 things; therefore, we can’t have contemplation with happiness because
we are % using our brain.
 Eudaimonia and Gratification: Happiness is part and parcel of the right action; it comes along
with the right action. When I do something right, I feel happy.

For Seneca:

Pleasure and virtue are separate.

Virtue can lead to happiness but pleasure cannot because I can feel complete about something but not
the pleasure.

Gratification can only be reached by the exercise of strength and virtue.

Flow:

Is the way positive psychology, measures gratification empirically (by observation rather than theory)?

It is the state we enter when our highest strength meets our highest challenges.

It is our complete immersion; and the absence of consciousness.

This is how the good life is different than the pleasant life.

It is about identifying one strength and virtues, and using them to obtain gratification.
-the belief that we can rely on shortcuts to gratification and bypass the exercise of the strengths and
virtues is fully.

So the good life is =identifying one’s signature strength and virtues and using them in work, love, play,
etc… to produce gratification.

In order to identify signature strengths students, take the VIA questionnaire and ask them to deploy
them at work, college, etc.…

So, Martin asked students to choose a very hard task they find, and use one of their signature strengths.

One student for example used to work as a data entry, transformed it into flow. Using his strength off
curiosity and love of learning, he began to look for analyzing these numbers.

Martin also gave an assignment to students, to distinct between pleasure and gratification.

They selected activities that gave them pleasure, and differentiate it with activities of doing something
philanthropic.

They concluded that when pleasurable activities are over, they leave no trace, but the gratification of
these activities lingers.

The last part of the assignment was about the Meaningful life:

it is similar to the good life , but with one further ingredient : using highest strength to serve something
larger than we are and we call it positive institutions.

So good life = using my signature strength+ work on myself so much to achieve gratification

Meaningful.

Meaningful life= using my highest strength to help people.