Happiness? 'Bah humbug' says one writer

According to at least one author the past four decades the concepts of Empowerment and Entitlement have produced "the most coddled generation in American history". Steve Salerno is the author of "SHAM: How the Self Help Movement Made America Helpless" and his recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal thinks that the self-help inspired pursuit of happiness may actually prevent people from achieving it.

...a lot of us seemed a lot happier, or at least less restless, before the Happiness Movement began bullying us. Myrna Blyth, a longtime editor in chief of Ladies' Home Journal, made this point explicitly in her 2004 book, "Spin Sisters." Ms. Blyth undertook an informal study of the themes in women's magazines as they evolved over recent decades, and concluded that what women have mostly gotten from their magazines is the message that they're never quite happy enough -- never good enough, never fulfilled enough, never far enough along on the path to "having it all."

He also challenges the over-the-top esteem building movement that essentially promises everyone that they can be anything that they want:

Contrary to what you hear from Oprah, not "everything you want in life" is attainable (unless, maybe, you are Oprah). Consider the staple line from school administrators during self-esteem-boosting student-assemblies: "In this great country, you can even be president, if you want!" While technically it's true that anybody can be president, it is not true that everybody can be president. Yet that's the implication. In my own case, growing up in Brooklyn, I wanted desperately to patrol center field for the Dodgers. Alas, I had millions of young competitors, some of whom had actual major league skills. If that is your dream -- the only dream that will make you happy -- what do you do when the Dodgers fail to call?

That last sentence is his main point and he aims it squarely at books like "The Secret." The self-help movement has over-promised what is actually obtainable while erasing the coping skills needed to deal with the "hard truths of an unforgiving world." The result he notes is that when plans inevitably don't work out people become depressed, turn to drugs, or even suicide (he quotes a figure that suicides are up 300% in people aged 15-24 during the years 1960-2000.

If Mr. Salerno's words come off as overly-cynical, his message is not that far from the more respected portion of the self-help movement called positive psychology. Mr. Salerno notes that "happiness is best viewed as an ongoing marathon rather than a succession of disconnected sprints. It's a long-term commitment that sometimes calls for sacrifice and self-denial, compromise and conciliation." Compare that to Dr. Ben-Shahar's description of the role of positive psychology in helping people become happy: "The goal of positive psychology is to help people lead happier lives, not in the sense of experiencing pleasure - of moving from one immediate gratification to the next - but in the sense of leading a meaningful and fulfilling life, of flourishing emotionally, spiritually and intellectually."

As an experiment, we took lessons from positive psychology and put them into a five day series of posts featuring quick exercises and explanatory information. All of this was with the stated goal of increasing one's level of happiness in just five days. The results were generally positive. If you are interested in learning about happiness research in general and possibly increasing your own happiness then start with this post.

Amazon link: Sham: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless