Comments (0)A Happier You
”Positive psychology” teaches how to make joy a priority in your life.
April 10, 2009Amy Klein
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
Question: Can happiness be learned?
Are you happy?
No, seriously.
Are. You. Happy?
You can’t answer that question, can you? You know what the first two words mean, but you’re not exactly sure what that third word is, even though you use it all the time.
“This makes me happy”; “She seems happy”; “Happy Birthday”; “There! Are you happy now?”
Actually, the quest is not new. From Adam to Aristotle, Tony Robbins to Tony Soprano, from the Bible to the best-seller lists, philosophers, religious leaders, theologians, politicians — all have dealt in one way or another with what it takes to live a happy life. America, in fact, is the only nation founded upon this: The pursuit of happiness is our inalienable right.
Even the world of psychology—which has long studied human suffering—has joined the fray. With the recent founding of “positive psychology,” a new branch devoted to applying empirical methods to studying and creating happiness, it seems everyone—from rabbis to doctors to teachers to coaches—is involved in the quest once dominated by self-help gurus.
“Most people have a very fragmented idea of what happiness is,” said Dr. John Drimmer, who co-founded of The Positive Psychology Center of California pospsychology.com), which offers individual and group psychotherapy, professional training and corporate consulting to help people live lives of purpose and joy and fulfillment.
Dr. Drimmer said Americans equate happiness with self-esteem. But that’s only a part of it; self-esteem alone doesn’t lead to happiness.
Instead of happiness, he said, “Well-being is a better word. That’s what I think we can expect, and want, out of life.”
Harvard professor Tal Ben-Shahar puts it quite simply: “Happiness is the overall experience of pleasure and meaning,” the Israeli-born author writes in his book, “Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfullment.” In a phone conversation from his home in Israel—he commutes to Boston to teach his positive psychology class – Dr. Ben-Shahar said that we tend to confuse pleasure with happiness.
“Pleasure is an important component, but not the only one. We also need our behavior to be personally meaningful, to be personally significant,” Dr. Ben-Shahar said.
“In Hebrew, osher means ‘approved.’ I live a life of which I approve, an authentic life,” Dr. Ben-Shahar said.
“Authentic Happiness” is the name of another book, this one by Dr. Martin Seligman, who in 1998 founded the field of positive psychology, which “focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character and healthy institutions,” according to the University of Pennsylvania’s Positive Psychology Center.
Dr. Seligman’s research, the center’s Web site said, “has demonstrated that it is possible to be happier—to feel more satisfied, to be more engaged with life, find more meaning, have higher hopes, and probably even laugh and smile more, regardless of one’s circumstances.” (At authentichappiness.com, you can find tests to take using positive psychology.)
One of the best scientific explanations of what it feels like to be happy comes from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of the “Flow” series that began with the 1990 “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Steps Toward Enhancing the Quality of Life)”:
“The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”
These moments of flow, or optimal experience, can occur while working; socializing; exercising; reading; being with family, friends, lovers or alone (but probably not while watching TV, which, according to his scientific monitoring, actually produces lower levels of flow).
Here’s how he breaks down the phenomenology of enjoyment:
- We take on tasks we have a chance of completing.
- We must be able to concentrate on what we are doing.
- The task has clear goals and immediate feedback.
- We have a deep and effortless involvement and are separated from everyday worries.
- We have a sense of control over our actions during the experience.
- Our concern for self disappears, but emerges stronger after the flow experience.
- Our sense of time is altered during the experience.
But why are we so concerned with happiness now? Perhaps it used to be that people—people like our grandparents, and their grandparents—thought that if they just had this one thing (food, freedom, wealth, kids, security), then they would be happy.
“Traditionally, people looked for it in more money and prestige, but they [now] realize it hasn’t worked,” Dr. Ben-Shahar said.
In other words, some of us have gotten everything we ever wanted, and we are still not happy.
Many rabbis and spiritual leaders believe that unhappiness is the modern plague because we are so disconnected from religion.
“When a man has a path, he is happy,” said Rabbi Matityahu Glazerson, author and speaker from the RazOt, The Lev Eliyahu Institute. “There is no happiness like the closing off of doubt.”
“To be truly happy, we need to live as spiritual beings,” writes Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, a doctor and rabbi, in “Happiness and the Human Spirit: The Spirituality of Being the Best You Can Be.”
He’s not talking about being religious.
“Every person can be spiritual, regardless of the degree or even presence of formal religion, by being the best person he or she can be,” he said.
Even scientists agree that our general disconnect from religion might be what has gotten us to this search for happiness, because religion and religious institutions provide many of the essential ingredients needed to be happy: interconnectedness, community, family, meaning, uplifting experiences, a sense of purpose.
But many scientists, who pride themselves on intellectual rigor, say the days of formalized religion are over, despite those benefits.
“The shields that have worked in the past—the order that religion, patriotism, ethnic traditions and habits instilled by social classes used to profit—are no longer effective for [the] increasing number of people who feel exposed to the harsh winds of chaos,” the Flow series’ Dr. Csikszentmihalyi writes.
So, the question remains, is it possible to become happy?
First, scholars in the field argue, happiness is not a static or definitive state of being, it’s actually a process. The question, Dr. Ben-Shahar writes, should not be “Am I happy?” but “How can I be happier?”
“The question acknowledges the nature of happiness and the fact that its pursuit is an ongoing process best represented by an infinite continuum, not by a finite point,” Dr. Ben-Shahar writes. “We can always be happier; no person experiences perfect bliss at all times and has nothing more to which he can aspire.”
And that is the whole point of psychology—or at least positive psychology.
“It’s the empirical study of how people can live rich, rewarding, wonderful lives,” Dr. Drimmer said. “Not just individually. How can we create families that are like that and even countries that are like that?”
It’s true that there are some genetic and environmental factors. Some people are born with better temperaments, better parents, better living conditions, better lives. But almost all the happiness research has shown that happiness has little to do with outside conditions.
Every day we read about celebrities—who would seem to have reached the epitome of what we’re striving for—who nevertheless are on drugs, in rehab or on the verge of suicide.
Yet Viktor Frankl, in “Man’s Search for Meaning” (Mass Market Paperback), catalogued Holocaust survivors who found meaning in their lives. Rabbi Twerski found conjoined twins who didn’t want to separate because they were happy.
Amy Klein is religion editor for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles.