No, I’m not blogging about the 2006 film, satisfyingly adequate as it was.  I’m talking about positive psychology, the academic movement that is turning traditional therapy – where else? – on its head.  Here are two new recent tid-bits from my quest to understand, evaluate and apply this radical new thinking.  Enjoy!

First off, there was an excellent discussion on Radio 4 this week called In Pursuit of Happiness.  “Claudia Hammond looks at the government’s plan to measure the nation’s happiness and asks whether happiness and a sense of well-being are skills that can be taught. A growing body of evidence, from fields such as positive psychology, suggests that happier, more optimistic people live longer and are ultimately more successful than people with a more pessimistic nature. But is optimism something that can be learnt, and can it be applied to an entire nation?”

Claudia Hammond as a journalist understands the subject well and has interviewed Martin Seligman before.  As to the questions in the last sentence, I’m thinking ‘definitely’ and ‘possibly‘ in that order.

Second, in the last few days I’ve purchased a book that is a surprise hit.  Why surprise?  I bought in in Bargain Books for 99p.  And I’ve never heard of the author.  It’s called Help Yourself to Happiness by Keith Were.  Not only does it provide a clear survey of the field, it does so in totally practical terms and even managed to cover aspects that others neglect e.g. the nefarious influence of the media, internet and TV.  Watch a video summary of it here.

A friend of mine argued with me last week that we human beings are built for happiness, and that depression is therefore something that is unnatural.  Aristotle agrees with him.

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

Do you?

Image credit: meddygarnet.

I had a mini-epiphany the other day.  This happens to me recurrently, especially after eating my wife’s curry.   I take it as yet another proof of the mind-body linkage.  What happens is that there are two bits of information floating around in my brain that suddenly decide they are related.  As a consequence, I go Eureka!

This time it has to do with the thought of two seemingly different guys.  The first is Martin Seligman, about whom you’ve heard plenty from me before.  Seligman holds that there are three paths to happy lives, or three possible routes to happiness.   They also constitute three overlapping fields of research in the field of positive psychology.

Here is how he describes them:

“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.”

The second guy is called Søren Kierkegaard, a Danish philosopher in the 19th century.  As far as I can remember from my graduate days, he has many interesting things to say about the pleasures of anticipation, repetition and recollection.  Among other things, he believed that there are three ‘stages on life’s way’:

The aesthetic – The aesthetic is the realm of sensory experience and pleasures.   To live the aesthetic life to the fullest one must seek to maximize those pleasures.  This is an immature stage.

The ethical – The ethical life is based on a consistent, coherent set of rules established for the good of society.  The ethical person considers the effect his or her actions will have on others and gives more weight to promoting social welfare than to achieving personal gain.

The religious – The religious life focuses on self-exploration.   Kierkegaard considers the religious life to be the highest plane of existence.  He also believes that almost no one lives a truly religious life.  For Kierkegaard, this life is exclusively personal; large-scale religion distracts people from real relationships.

Do you see the similarities between their two visions?

Yes, there are interesting differences too.  For instance, Seiligman’s final stage widens out to embrace the larger view, whereas Kierkegaard’s collapses into the personal.  Also, I suspect that Seligman views his three stages as complementary, with each new stage enveloping the one below it.  Kierkegaard seems to paint a picture of conflict between them.

Anyway, if nothing else, this blog has given you an idea of what happens in my brain after I eat curry…

Image credit: blogger’s own.

Click here to listen to a brilliant interview with Professor Martin Seligman, modern founder of Positive Psychology an author of Authentic Happiness.

In a special edition, Claudia Hammond talks to the father of Positive Psychology, Professor Martin Seligman, about why optimism is not only good for your health, but could also help you live longer. Claudia visits a school that has introduced happiness lessons with some surprising results. And we hear from Dr Julie Norem about why, for some of us, a more pessimistic approach might be the winning strategy.

What interests me is that Seligman describes himself as a natural pessimist and depressive.  That’s the kind of guru I can listen to!  He also reiterates a point that I’ve made on his behalf before – the optimism he promotes is not meant to exclude a sort of risk-cautious realism but rather complement it.

Anyway, enjoy the conversation.  Seligman’s treatment of the topic is both masterful and humane.  Most impressive.

Image credit: Diego Cupolo’s.

A few weekends ago I happened across an article called Positive thinking is positively bad for you so always look on the glum slide of life by Virginia Ironside.  In it she gave a positive review for a book entitled Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.  The author is Barbara Ehrenreich, an American journalist, socialist and political activist.

I haven’t got a chance to read the book yet so I’ll try to keep my mind open until I do.  All I can do is comment on the article by Ironside and some other stuff I’ve read on the Internet.  What I do know is that Ehrenreich claims overly positive thinking had a part to play in the recent financial collapse.  More tellingly, she is happy to lump together academics like Martin Seligman with health-and-wealth prosperity preachers like Joel Osteem and New Agers like Oprah Winfrey.

• I find the first of these claims overly optimistic for an anti-capitalist like Ehrenreich.  The socialist solution of borrowing and spending our way out of recession is suicidal; the entrepreneurial method of small-but-optimistic thinking is the way ahead.  Even the socialists of the British Labour party admit the need for economic optimism, now more than ever.  It’s a shame that some of our well-heeled American cousins seem determined to cut down the first shoots of  recovery as they sprout.
• And the second of her claims is plain sloppy.  I’ve blogged before about the important distinction between positive thinking and positive psychology.  Positive thinking is a pseudo-scientific sentiment, while positive psychology is an academic movement encompassing some of the greatest minds in modern and contemporary psychology.  Ironside and Ehrenreich display their ignorance here big-time!  I might as well condemn all journalism as vulgar and populist because I’ve glanced at The Daily Sport!

Anyway its an interesting debate.  Here are some other articles for those who want to read around the topic.

Singin’ in the Wane: The positive thinking movement — panacea or national addiction?

Bright-sided: Is feel-good actually bad?

A personal trainer for your happiness

Learned Optimism: How To Change Your Mind And Your Life

Image credit: gwydionwilliams.

This is quick blog to make a quick point: there is a world of difference between ‘positive thinking’ and positive psychology.

Positive thinking…

…is a largely esoteric and notoriously vague concept.  It was the brain child of Norman Vincent Peel.  It has also been advocated by those associated with the New Age Movement, NLP and the farther reaches of the personal development industry.  This of course neither makes it false nor dangerous as a matter of necessity.  It does however put it beyond the Western scientific model.

Positive psychology…

…on the other hand is just that: an accepted and respected branch of the academic discipline of psychology.  While it does overlap somewhat with philosophy in terms of some of the questions it asks and ideas it ponders (e.g. well-being and meaning), it steers away from quick-fix answers and mystical methods.   Do not confuse the two!

So why am I labouring this point?  To remove any prejudice from your minds’ before I share some interesting news.  Did you know that it is a scientific fact that optimistic women live longer than others?  Studies by both American scientists have shown that optimistic people have a lower risk of heart disease.  Cynicism literally destroys the heart.  Earlier studies by Dutch scientist have shown the same thing with regard to men.

So the next time you’re tempted to sneer at the ‘half full rather than half empty‘ kind of person…don’t.  When listening to the sound of an optimist, even the arch-pessimist Thomas Hardy had to admit that maybe there was out there “Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew, that I was unaware”.

Image credit: ESOX LUCIUS.