Topic: Happiness and Positive Psychology

Topic: Happiness and Positive Psychology

The Happiness Advantage – Shawn Achor

Introduction
A book in the tradition of Positive Psychology (pioneered by Martin Seligman)
Basic Premise is that Happiness is the precursor to Success, not the other way around
Happiness and Optimism fuel performance and achievement.
Book shows why the Happiness Advantage is so powerful and can be put to daily use
Main Points of Book:
Seven Main Principles:
The Happiness Advantage: Because positive brains have a biological advantage over brains that are neutral or negative, this principle teaches us how to retrain our brains to capitalize on positivity and improve our productivity and performance.

The Fulcrum and the Lever: How we experience the world and our ability to succeed within it constantly change based on our mindset. This principle teaches us how we can adjust our mindset (our fulcrum) in a way that gives us the power (the lever) to be more fulfilled and successful.

The Tetris Effect: When our brains get stuck in a pattern that focuses on stress, negativity and failure, we set ourselves up to fail. This principle teaches us how to retrain our brains to spot patterns of possibility, so we can see-and-seize opportunity wherever we look.

Falling Up: In the midst of defeat, stress and crisis, our brains map different paths to help us cope. This principle is about finding the mental path that not only leads up out of failure or suffering but teaches us to be happier and more successful because of it.

The Zorro Circle: When challenges loom and we get overwhelmed, our rational brains can get hijacked by emotions. This principle teaches us how to regain control by focusing first on small, manageable goals and then gradually expanding our circle to achieve bigger and bigger ones.

The 20-Second Rule: Sustaining lasting change often feels impossible because our will is limited. And when willpower fails, we fall back on our old habits and succumb to the path of least resistance. This principle shows how, by making small energy adjustments, we can reroute the path of least resistance and replace bad habits with good ones.

Social Investment: In the midst of challenges and stress, some people choose to hunker down and retreat within themselves. But the most successful people invest in their friends, peers and family members to propel themselves forward. This principle teaches us how to invest more in one of the greatest predictors of success and excellence -- our social support network.

Name of Book – Flow (MihalyCsikszentmihalyi)

Introduction
“This book summarizes, for a general audience, decades of research on the positive aspects of human experience—joy, creativity, the process of total involvement with life I call flow”

style style

Main Points of Book:
Psychic entropy ( internal disorder) is the default state of the mind

“The lack of inner order manifests itself in the subjective condition that some call ontological anxiety, or existential dread.”

“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. Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen.”

“This simple truth—that the control of consciousness determines the quality of life—has been known for a long time; in fact, for as long as human records exist”

“THERE ARE TWO MAIN STRATEGIES we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.” The second is better.
“Pleasure is an important component of the quality of life, but by itself it does not bring happiness. Sleep, rest, food, and sex provide restorative homeostatic experiences that return consciousness to order after the needs of the body intrude and cause psychic entropy to occur. But they do not produce psychological growth. They do not add complexity to the self. Pleasure helps to maintain order, but by itself cannot create new order in consciousness.”

The objective (in life) is to develop an "autotelic self". “The “autotelic self” is one that easily translates potential threats into enjoyable challenges, and therefore maintains its inner harmony. A person who is never bored, seldom anxious, involved with what goes on, and in flow most of the time may be said to have an autotelic self.

The autotelic self is able to transform entropic experiences into flow!

“However, enjoyment, as we have seen, does not depend on what you do, but rather on how you do it.”

Mihaly and other researchers discovered through ESM (Experience Sampling Method) that people were happier when they were engaged in leisure activities that involve less material (inexpensive) resources as opposed to expensive resources.

Work vs Leisure: In one study, they tested how Flow varied between work and leisure. Used the ESM method. Discovered that 54% of the time people were in Flow when at work. Number is 18% for leisure. However, paradoxically, people indicated that they would rather be doing something else more often when at leisure than when at work!! This paradox can be explained by cultural stereotypes.

Use of Free Time: The ultimate test is what we do with solitude. The goal should be to fill the free time with activities that help grow the self.

“A person who rarely gets bored, who does not constantly need a favorable external environment to enjoy the moment, has passed the test for having achieved a creative life.”

Pathway to an Autotelic Life: “It does not matter where one starts—whether one chooses goals first, develops skills, cultivates the ability to concentrate, or gets rid of self-consciousness”

Rules for Developing an autotelic self
Goal Setting
Becoming immersed in the activity
Paying attention to what's happening
Learning to enjoy immediate experience

Autotelic Self - “Someone who is in harmony no matter what he does, no matter what is happening to him, knows that his psychic energy is not being wasted on doubt, regret, guilt, and fear, but is always usefully employed. Inner congruence ultimately leads to that inner strength and serenity we admire in people who seem to have come to terms with themselves.”

Cultivating Goals: Pitrim Sorokin (Sociologist at Harvard) divided the various epochs of western civilization into three types:

Sensate (cultures integrated around views of reality designed to satisfy the senses)
Ideational (cultures look down on the material/tangible and strive for material supernatural ends)
Idealistic (cultures which are a combination of the two and are able to combine an acceptance of concrete sensory principles with a reverence for spiritual ends.

Steps to Self-Actualization: (consensus among psychologists)
[Inward] Self-Preservation: Basically, survival instincts
[Expansive] Community: Expansion of the horizons of the meaning system to embrace the values of the community (family, neighborhood, religious group, etc)
[Inward] Reflexive Individualism : Turns inward, is no longer blindly conforming and develops an autonomous conscience.
[Expansive] Final Integration: Final turning away from self, back toward integrating with other people.

Name of Book – Happier (Tal Ben-Shahar )

Introduction
The primary objective of the book is to leverage decades of research in psychology with a view towards showing how to maximize Happiness, the “ultimate currency”
The book is action-oriented and is a workbook. “The work has to comprise both reflection and action.”

Main Points of Book:

The advice from Positive Psychology is different from self-help gurus in a radically different way. Their advice/solutions are based on rigorous testing and not on baseless platitudes and off-the-cuff assertions. Supreme court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.”
We need both reflection and action.
Ritualizing positive actions will allow us to achieve excellence. In Aristotle’s words, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
The Happiness Archetypes:

“Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.”

In extensive cross-cultural and longitudinal studies of happiness, psychologist David Myers found a very low correlation between material wealth and happiness, except in cases of extreme poverty where people’s basic needs were not being met. Moreover, although for the last fifty years the population in many countries has become wealthier, studies reveal no increase, and often a decrease, in levels of happiness
The emphasis in my approach is not so much on attaining goals as it is on having them. In his article “Positive Affectivity,” psychologist David Watson underscores the value of the journey: “Contemporary researchers emphasize that it is the process of striving after goals—rather than goal attainment per se—that is crucial for happiness and positive affectivity.” The primary purpose of having a goal—a future purpose—is to enhance enjoyment of the present.
Summarizing the research on goals and happiness, Kennon Sheldon and his colleagues write, “People seeking greater wellbeing would be well advised to focus on the pursuit of (a) goals involving growth, connection, and contribution rather than goals involving money, beauty, and popularity and (b) goals that are interesting and personally important to them rather than goals they feel forced or pressured to pursue.” While most if not all people pursue popularity, beauty, and money—and, at times, feel forced or pressured to do something—Sheldon is pointing out that we would be happier if we shifted more of our focus to goals that are self-concordant. Self-concordant goals are goals that we pursue out of deep personal conviction and/or a strong interest.