Do-It-Yourself Happiness

Are there simple steps you can take to be happier?

An emerging branch of psychology seeks to understand and foster positive emotion and well-being. And early indications are that people can actually learn to be happy.

Not Dr. Freud's Psychology

Traditional psychology has focused on the abnormal and negative, not increasing happiness.

In a paper he co-authored last year, Dr. Martin Seligman, of the University of Pennsylvania, and colleagues wrote:

At least since the time of Aristotle, scholars, philosophers, and religious leaders have pondered the question “How can we become lastingly happier?”

Yet until recently, the only guiding question in clinical psychology and psychiatry has been “How can we reduce suffering?” ... (but) few people are wholly content just with being less depressed and less anxious and less angry.

People naturally focus on curing problems rather than preventing them before they occur. In psychology's first century, the stakes were so high -- curing sick minds! -- that little effort was spent on the vast majority of people who didn't have a clinical condition.

Yet isn't there huge upside to making many people a little happier?

A New Approach

Enter the "positive psychology" movement.

In his most recent book, "Authentic Happiness," Seligman, Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center, writes that "The time has finally arrived for a science that seeks to understand positive emotion, build strength and virtue, and provide guideposts for finding what Aristotle called the `good life.'"

The scope of work facing the positive psychology movement is immense. As Seligman's paper notes, hundreds of methods to increase human happiness have been proposed, including the Buddha, the human potential movement of the '60's, and the self-improvement industry today.

But early research into just a few tools indicates that there are indeed actions that people can take to increase their own happiness.

Learning to be Happy

The research is part of a paper, "Positive Psychology Progress" in the July-August 2005 American Psychologist, which summarized progress in the positive psychology field and asks: will it work?

The team found that it does. For instance, two simple exercises seemed to make participants happier, even after six months:

1) Using signature strengths in a new way. Participants were asked to take our inventory of character strengths online at www.authentichappiness.org and to receive individualized feedback about their top five (“signature”) strengths. They were then asked to use one of these top strengths in a new and different way every day for one week.

2) Three good things in life. Participants were asked to write down three things that went well each day and their causes every night for one week. In addition, they were asked to provide a causal explanation for each good thing.

Seligman and his colleagues found that these exercises "increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms for six months" -- because most of the study participants continued doing them on their own after the one week was up. That's certainly a testament to their perceived value.

(Some of the materials are at this website, which also has more about the Penn program and Seligman's book.)

The field is young; the investigators called the study "the most ambitious random-assignment, placebo controlled test of happiness interventions we know." But while much remains to be done, the idea that one can take action to be happier is a powerful one.

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Here are Seligman's books about improving your own happiness:

"Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment" (Martin Seligman)

"Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (Vintage)" (Martin E. Seligman)

"What You Can Change and What You Can't: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement Learning to Accept Who You Are (Fawcett Book)" (Martin E. Seligman)