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Finding Happiness, Well-Being and Success – (2)

RELATED: PART ONE

by Lawrence J. Danks

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graphic courtesy of http://blazonsart.com/

This continuing series is based on an informational website developed by Lawrence J. Danks, Assistant Professor of Business at Camden County College. It features selected summaries of articles in positive psychology, motivation, innovation, reinvention, and management, as well as writings and commentary from Professor Danks. Login information to access the entire website, rather than just the selected segments here, is shown at the end of this selection.

Happiness and Well-Being

 

"The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. The common life of every day, with its cares, necessities, and duties, affords ample opportunity for acquiring experience of the best kind; and its most beaten paths provide the true worker with abundant scope for effort and room for self-improvement. The road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will usually be the most successful." Self-Help - Samuel Smiles

This segment summarizes some of the research of Dr. Martin Seligman, and the insights of others. Dr. Seligman is one of the recognized world authorities on positive psychology and finding well-being and happiness. We'll begin by reviewing basic concepts of happiness, then move to a higher level and talk about achieving well-being. With no disrespect intended, although this distinction is an important one, after that we'll proceed to refer to "happiness" rather than well-being because that is how most people describe the state they seek in life.

Authentic Happiness - Martin Seligman

My own happiness and self-help reading related to the creation of this online course started with reading Dr. Martin Seligman's book, Authentic Happiness. It's the first "happiness book" I'd suggest that you read. The wonderful thing about the research that Dr.Seligman and other positive psychologists have done, is that now people don't have to slog along in the dark, trying to find their way to happiness and well-being alone. Recognized principles are now available to provide guidance and to facilitate the journey.

Dr. Seligman says that "When well-being comes from engaging in our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity...When you read about strengths, you will find some that are deeply characteristic of you, whereas others are not. I call the former your "signature strengths", and one of my purposes is to distinguish these strengths from those that are less a part of you. I do not believe that you should devote overly much effort to correcting your weaknesses, Rather, I believe that the highest success in living, and the deepest emotional satisfaction, comes from building and using your signatures strengths." (As the famed financier and adviser to presidents Bernard Baruch said, "Do what you do best and leave the rest to others.") "The ability to attach yourself to something larger, and the larger the entity to which you attach yourself the better, the more meaning you will add to your life."

Such meaning boils down to serving the needs of others, rather than serving yourself or doing things that are ego-driven. This can make a great contribution to your happiness and feeling of success in life. (You don't have to be someone professionally dedicated to serving the spiritual needs of others or a social worker to do this. Anyone can do it in small ways in their daily life.)

Identifying Your Own Signature Strengths

You can take a step toward identifying your own signature strengths by going to the website:

www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu

This is Penn's "Authentic Happiness" website. Look in the middle column. You will see the "VIA Survey of Character Strengths" below the halfway point down the list. It surveys twenty-four possible character strengths:

- Curiosity/Interest in the World

- Love of Learning

- Judgment/Critical Thinking/Open-Mindedness

- Ingenuity/Originality/Practical Intelligence/Street Smarts

- Social Intelligence/Personal Intelligence/Emotional Intelligence Perspective 

- Value and Bravery

- Perseverance/Industry/Diligence

- Integrity/Genuineness/Honesty

- Kindness and Generosity

- Loving and Allowing Oneself To Be Loved

- Citizenship/Duty,Teamwork/Loyalty

- Fairness and Equity

- Leadership

- Self-Control

- Prudence/Discretion/Caution

- Humility and Modesty

- Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence

- Gratitude, Hope/Optimism/Future-Mindedness

- Spirituality/Sense of Purpose/Faith/Religiousness

- Forgiveness and Mercy

- Playfulness and Humor, and Zest

- Passion/Enthusiasm

After you finish the fairly brief test, you'll know what your own "signature strengths" are. There are no "right answers" to the survey questions. Just answer each one as honestly as you can. Otherwise, you'd only be hurting yourself and defeating the purpose.

Dr.Seligman's book contains a splendid amount of interpretive information that will provide increased guidance for you. Your signature strengths are the ones you should try to use as much as possible in your daily life. I'd also recommend that you re-take the test periodically to ascertain whether you've had any changes in your signature strengths. I've taken it twice. It described me very well.

You may also note that the "Authentic Happiness" website shows a number of other tests you can take. I would take as many of them that seem relevant to you. They are based on positive psychology research and have been designed by experts. The results can help you make more informed decisions.

When you get to the website, you will be asked to register before you can take any tests. This is merely for the Center's informational purposes. Any information you provide, and responses you give, are kept confidential.

Each one of you is unique. No one else on earth, out of the billions of people who are here, has the same combination of signature strengths, in the same proportions, that you have. These unique talents are too beautiful and meaningful to waste. Your potential happiness is too beautiful to waste too! It's your life. It can only benefit you and those you come into contact with you when you are living your best life.

Lasting Happiness

Dr. Seligman says, "It is important to distinguish momentary happiness from your enduring level of happiness." In other words, there is a difference between something's being pleasurable and something that provides true gratification. While eating ice cream sundaes every day, getting a promotion, making more money or winning the lottery might be produced happiness, they are not the source of long-term happiness produced by gratification-producing experiences.

Into every life, a little rain, and sometimes a lot of it, may fall. No matter what you are subject to, no matter how bad it is, right now, or later in life, remember that it didn't come to stay, it came to pass. Psychological research is on your side. Recovery usually occurs within a few months. So, keep hope alive and keep moving forward. When you get low, just remember the famous song, "Time Is On Your Side", Oh Yes It Is... In my Management lecture course, I usually accompany this with a "slip-sliding" dance I do to drive the point home, not to be simple, but to reinforce that important message.

The Hedonic Treadmill

To find happiness, positive psychology research also suggests that you not only need to identify meaningful actions you can take, but you also need to avoid placing undue reliance on actions that are not going to produce the long term happiness you seek: "Another barrier to raising your level of happiness is the hedonic (pleasure seeking) treadmill, which causes you to rapidly and inevitably adapt to good things by taking them for granted." That causes them to lose their previous importance to us. This would include getting salary increases and getting married, among many others..."When we engage in pleasures...they do not build anything for the future...Habitually choosing the easy pleasures over the gratifications may have untoward consequences. One of the major symptoms of depression is self-absorption." This is fairly observable when we see high-profile examples of certain athletes and celebrities, who often have millions of dollars, and the freedom to do just about anything they want, having drug and alcohol problems.

Dr. Seligman is certainly not suggesting that pleasure isn't a good thing to have in your life. He's simply saying that focusing on that alone will not make you happy. Pleasure passes. Gratification produces real and substantive support for finding long term happiness.

Some of Dr. Seligman's findings, and those of other researchers regarding the impact of pleasure seeking on happiness follow. It's important to note that these findings are research based. They're not created from Dr. Seligman's, or other researcher's, own personal opinions, or from public opinion polls. I say this because some of them may seem to "defy logic":

·         Major events, such as being fired or promoted, typically lose their impact on happiness levels in less than three months

·         Wealth has a surprisingly low correlation with happiness level. Rich people are, on average, only slightly happier than poor people

·         Physical attractiveness does not have much effect at all on happiness.

·         Objective physical health (how healthy we actually are) is barely correlated with happiness.

·        Subjective physical health, how we feel about our health, is a more important determinant of happiness.

 However, both Dr. Seligman, and Dr. Sonya Lybormirsky, another noted positive psychologist who we will be visiting later, state that: "There are limits on adaptation. There is some evidence that there are certain things that we never get used to, or adapt to only very slowly. The death of a child or the death of a spouse in a car crash is examples...The family caregivers of Alzheimer's patients show deteriorating, subjective well-being over time."

Impact of Other Factors On Happiness

· Money: I teach business subjects, so it would be hardly surprising that I would view money, making it or making more of it, or generating a profit, as undesirable concepts. They aren't to Dr. Seligman and other positive psychology researchers either: "How important money is to you, more than the money itself, influences your level of happiness. Materialism seems to be counterproductive: at all levels of real income, people who value money more than other goals are less satisfied with their income, and with their lives as a whole, although precisely why is a mystery."

This is a big warning. Do as well as you can financially, but don't sacrifice what's really important in your life to do it. Make sure your life is imbued with meaning. (Tal Ben-Shahar, in Happiness, says "money pursuit is ok if it is pursued as a means to an end, such as making it possible to free up our time to do things that are personally significant to us, or it can enable us to support a cause we believe in". In such cases, the money itself is not the goal. Higher purposes are.)

· Marriage: "Marriage is robustly related to happiness". But "better to be single, than unhappily married."

· Social Life: "In our study of very happy people, Ed Deiner,( another important positive psychologist we'll visit later) and I found that every person, except one, in the top 10% of happiness was involved in a romantic relationship...The very happy people spend the least time alone, and the most time socializing, and they are rated highest on good relationships by themselves and also by their friends." (Being a "loner" is generally not conducive to happiness.)

·   Negative Emotion: "Having more than your share of misery does not mean you cannot have a lot of joy as well."... Dr.Seligman suggests avoiding negative events and negative emotion - which I would relate to avoiding negative people too. This is good to remember throughout your life. Just because you may have problems, don't let it spill over into the rest of your life and spoil the happiness that Dr.Seligman says you can find some way every day.

·    Age: "Feeling on top of the world and being in the depths of despair become less common with age and experience." This is very important to remember if you are younger and get very depressed. You might think that something that has happened is "the end of the world." It isn't. Just hang in there. 

Change always happens. It's just a matter of when. Remember that Dr.Seligman says that most often the bad effect from an event will normally pass in a relatively short time. As Dr.Robert Schuller, the well-known motivational writer counsels, "Tough times never last. Tough people do."

Never think of harming yourself in any way, and know that drugs or alcohol are never the answer. They ruin lives - and they can take them too. I've seen it first hand. I grew up in a funeral home. I saw it there, and a number of times afterward, including in my own extended family. The solution is to any problems or lack of self-esteem is in facing reality and dealing with it. You can't achieve it chemically. You can only find it by taking positive steps in your life. Try to do things that make you proud of yourself at the end of the day.

Moving Ahead

Dr. Seligman also says that there are changes that can be made in internal circumstances that can be very beneficial. He cautions though that if you decide to change them that none of the changes will come without real effort, but if you do change them, your level of happiness is likely to increase lastingly. (One book that can be very helpful in making changes and getting yourself on an improved path is the best seller, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Many times the ruts we find ourselves in are a result of nonproductive habits we want to change. Duhigg explains the process and shows you how to replace a bad habit with good ones. It is a very helpful book.)

Dr. Seligman suggests weighing your life up once a year. If you find you are getting short weight, change your life. You'll usually find that the solution is in your own hands. (We often have a fair amount of control over our own destiny. As a famous Pogo cartoon said, " We have met the enemy, and he is us." Whatever we feel we want to change, we should try to do it. If we can't, The Dalai Lama, in The Art of Happiness at Work, suggests that we try to re-fashion what we are doing into something that we can consider more positive, e.g, "I don't just mop floors, I create a more healthful environment that is beneficial to the users of the facility. I also have the opportunity to bring some sunshine into the lives of those I meet while I'm doing my work." Thinking like this can help re-design a job into a calling, instead of simply being "a boring job."

"To the extent that you may be dwelling in the past, and that you determine that this presages the future, you will tend to allow yourself to be a passive vessel, that does not actively change its course. Such beliefs are responsible for magnifying many people's inertia."( lacking effort to change things or "being a slug.") Don't dwell on negative things. Move along and move ahead. When a negative thought enters your head just say to yourself, "Don't go there!" Also, distract yourself as often as you need to by doing something positive.

Sometimes inertia can be caused by things that are very emotionally disturbing to us. My mother was a nurse. She counseled many people during her lifetime. Her advice: "Just do the next thing". Don't mentally overwhelm yourself. So if you feel as if you can hardly move; get your shower, then take care of your personal grooming, then unload the dishwasher. Don't think of everything, just think of the next thing. Keep moving down the track, one item at a time. This will also serve to distract you from your funk. After a while, you will sense some degree of progress, to the point where you may be able to start seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.) 

The Importance of Having Gratitude

"Insufficient appreciation and savoring of the good events of your past, and overemphasis of the bad ones are two culprits that undermine serenity, contentment, and satisfaction...Gratitude amplifies the savoring of an appreciation of the good events gone by, and rewriting history by forgiveness which loosens the power of bad events, and can actually transform memories into good ones." (When we reflect on our good fortune, it makes it easier to absorb the shocks of life.)

"You can't hurt the perpetrators by not forgiving, but you can set yourself free by forgiving." (Remember that they are highly unlikely to be losing any sleep over things, as you might be. You are only hurting yourself.) "Physical health, particularly in cardiovascular terms, is (also) likely to be better for those who forgive, than in those who do not. And when it is followed by reconciliation, forgetting can vastly improve your relations with the person forgiven." This process can also be helped by the passage of time, which can assist in altering perspective. As the famed actor, Ingrid Bergman noted relatedly, "Happiness is good health and a bad memory.")

Flow and Gratification

Flow is a concept that will be considered in more detail later when we visit the book entitled Flow by the recognized father of the concept, Mihaly (Mike) Czikszentmihalyi. Being in a "flow state means doing something meaningful and challenging when we lose the concept of time and self. Increasing "flow states" increases gratification. "Gratification is part and parcel of right action. It cannot be derived from bodily pleasure, nor is it a state that can be chemically induced or attained by any shortcuts. It can only be had by activity consonant with a noble purpose." Seligman lists the following as components for gratification found in a state of flow:

- The task is challenging and requires skill (It also can't be too easy, or virtually impossible either because then the challenge disappears. If I play basketball with a five-year-old and keep blocking his shots, that can't be a flow experience because I would derive no satisfaction from that. It would lack challenge. Alternatively, if I played "one on one" with Lebron James, that would cease to be a challenge for me too, because he'd block every shot I took. The challenge has to be fulfilling enough, but reasonably achievable.) It requires these features:

- We concentrate

- There are clear goals

- We get immediate feedback

- We have a deep sense of effortless involvement

- There is a sense of control

- Our sense of self-vanishes

- Time stops (I've worked for hours sometimes while writing this, and writing books, and can't believe where the time went, because I lost cognizance of it. You have probably have had similar experiences with things you enjoy. If you haven't, part of the happiness process is to create more flow states for yourself, as often as you can.)

Work and Personal Satisfaction

"Anyone with a proper attitude about his or her work can transform that work into a calling...The key to recrafting jobs is to make them into callings...Americans surprisingly have considerably more flow at work than in leisure time...My recipe for more flow is as follows:

- Identify your signature strengths
- Choose work that lets you use them every day
- Re-craft your present work to use your signature strengths more"

If you are an employer or manager, choose employees whose signature strengths mesh with the work they will do. Make room to allow employees to re-craft work within the bounds of your goals. (Do you remember the children's Fisher-Price workbench, where the child took a small hammer and pounded square, rectangular and round pegs into the appropriate holes? What happened when kids tried to bang the square peg into the round hole? It created a non-productive and frustrating work environment. It does the same with people on the job. Put square pegs in square holes and round pegs into round holes. You won't have to pound the life out them to force them in. They'll slide right in. Try the same thing with yourself, and if you're an owner or manager, do it with your co-workers too.)

Authentic Happiness also contains a special section on "Why are Lawyers So Unhappy?" It is highly worthwhile. There are also sections on "Love" and on "Raising Children", as well as many other worthwhile topics.

Conclusion of Authentic Happiness

"Pleasures are momentary...Gratifications are more abiding. They are characterized by absorption, engagement, and flow...The good life, in contrast, is not about maximizing positive emotion but is a life wrapped up in successfully using your signature strengths to obtain abundant and authentic gratification. The meaningful life has one additional feature: using your signature strengths in the service of something larger than you are. To live all three lives is to lead a full life."

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To access the complete “Happiness, Well-Being and Success” website:

Log in to ccc.webstudy.com

User Name: happiness  Password: success

Click: Happiness Course

Then “Timeline”, then “Expand All”

 

To register for Professor Danks’ online Management, Legal Environment/LawI or Business Law II courses throughout the year, check the Camden County College website for course offerings: www.camdencc.edu. Register through the Registrar’s Office or WebAdvisor.

CNBNews Note: The author is an assistant professor of business at Camden County College, Blackwood, NJ and is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia and Gloucester Catholic High School alumnus Class of '63

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