Examining and Pursuing Happiness

 Positive Psychology, Psychology  No Responses »
Feb 052010
 

Source: “Authentic Happiness,” Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., Chapter 6

Satisfaction with Life Scale

Are most people happy?

A large majority of people in the United States report themselves as being happy. This result is common to most populations around the world. Oddly, most people see themselves as happier than others especially the popular, powerful and educated.

Why be happy?

Happy people are healthier, live longer, work more productively and have higher incomes, are more tolerant, more creative, and make decisions more easily, select challenging goals, are more persistent, have greater empathy, more friends, and better marriages. Much of this reflects an improved ability to function in social situations. But

“There is no duty we sell underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.” Robert Louis Stevenson

Who is happy?

Men and women report roughly equal levels of happiness and satisfaction. The same equality holds true across the age spectrum. Factors including formal education, IQ, and race also fail to affect happiness. Married people report more happiness than single who, in turn report more happiness than divorced or separated. Spiritual practice tends to increase happiness and tend to experience fewer negative life circumstances. It seems important that basic needs be met, but material abundance above those basic needs does not increase happiness.

“The happiest people all seem to have good friends.” Psychologist Ed Diener

The happiest people tend to be highly social, and spend the most time in the company of others. They tend to be extroverts and have the desire and ability to build strong social relationships. In one study, conscientiousness, with goal setting, personal control, and purposeful achievement, strongly correlated with life satisfaction. Happy people tend to experience high intrinsic self-esteem; they’re optimistic about themselves and their circumstances.

Pursuing Happiness
  • Do not interpret material achievement as happiness and success in life.
  • Compare yourself, and set your expectations, relative to those who have less.
  • Keep a gratitude journal and review it to remember the things you appreciate.
  • Discover the activities that allow you to experience a sense of flow and learn to reproduce those circumstances.
  • Commit to your goals, finish what you start, and experience your effort with quiet mindfulness.
  • Have and enjoy the hobby. Prefer engagement with life too sedentary activities.
  • Build and maintain satisfying family and social relationships.
  • Volunteer your attention, creativity, and efforts in service to others.
  • Sustain a satisfying spiritual practice that builds hope.

    Ed Diener

     Positive Psychology, Psychology, Virtue: Happiness  No Responses »
    Dec 182009
     

    Source: Amazon.com

    “Ed Diener is the Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois. He received his doctorate at the University of Washington in 1974, and has been a faculty member at the University of Illinois for the past 34 years. Dr. Diener was the president of both the International Society of Quality of Life Studies and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology. Currently he is the president of the International Positive Psychology Association. Dr. Diener was the editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Journal of Happiness Studies, and he is the founding editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science. Diener has over 240 publications, with about 190 being in the area of the psychology of well-being, and is listed as one of the most highly cited psychologists by the Institute of Scientific Information with over 12,000 citations to his credit. He won the Distinguished Researcher Award from the International Society of Quality of Life Studies, the first Gallup Academic Leadership Award, and the Jack Block Award for Personality Psychology. Dr. Diener also won several teaching awards, including the Oakley-Kundee Award for Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Illinois.”

    Shop at Amazon for:
    Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth
    by: Ed Diener

    “Happiness is a process, not a place. That’s one of the key concepts that leaps from Happiness: Unlocking The Mysteries Of Psychological Wealth by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas- Diener.” (Diana’s Blog: Quirky Words and Book)

    “In their sweeping new book Diener and his son, Robert Biswas-Diener, distill the results of worldwide research into happiness and come up with an explanation, a recipe, for a sustained state of good feeling, psychological wealth, as they call it.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 2008)

    Shop at Amazon for:
    Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener

    		The collected works of Ed Diener, in 3 volumes, present the major works of the leading research scientist studying happiness and well-being. Professor Diener has studied subjective well-being, people’s life satisfaction and positive emotions, for over a quarter of a century, and has published 200 works on the topic, many more than any other scholar. He has studied hundreds of thousands of people in over 140 nations of the world, and the collected works present the major findings from those studies. Diener has made many of the major discoveries about well-being, which are outlined in the chapters.

    Shop at Amazon for:
    Well-Being: The Foundations of Hedonic Psychology

    		The book is highly recommendable for those interested in hedonic psychology especially Subjective Well-Being (a.k.a. Happiness). It covers a wide range of chapters which include definitions, measurement, clarifications/reactions, recent findings and researches. Its probable drawback is that, to a certain degree, it is somewhat very technical in approach. Not too many readers might easily grasp some contents/materials presented. Nonetheless, it is a great reference material.

    Shop at Amazon for:
    Worker Well-Being and Public Policy, Volume 22 (Research in Labor Economics)

    In this volume, the authors explain the reasons why subjective indicators of well-being are needed. They describe how these indicators can offer useful input and provide examples of policy uses of well-being measures. The book then delves into objections to the use of subjective well-being indicators for policy purposes and discusses why these objections are not warranted. Finally, the book contains answers pertaining to the measures that are currently in use and describes the types of measures that are most likely to be valuable in the policy domain.

    Shop at Amazon for:
    Culture and Subjective Well-Being (Well Being and Quality of Life)

    		This book is based on the idea that we can empirically study quality of life and make cross-society comparisons of subjective well-being (SWB). A potential problem in studying SWB across societies is that of cultural relativism: if societies have different values, the members of those societies will use different criteria in evaluating the success of their society. By examining, however, such aspects of SWB as whether people believe they are living correctly, whether they enjoy their lives, and whether others important to them believe they are living well, SWB can represent the degree to which people in a society are achieving the values they hold dear. The contributors analyze SWB in relation to money, age, gender, democracy, and other factors.

    Happiness is the Journey

     Positive Psychology, Psychology, Virtue: Happiness  No Responses »
    Dec 102009
     

    Source O, The Oprah Magazine

    Photo: Lori Adamski-Peek

    Dr. Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener unlock the mystery of happiness“You can see it glimmering on the horizon: Happiness. And all you need to get there is to practice X, accomplish Y, and believe in Z.

    Wrong, says Ed Diener, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and president of the International Positive Psychology Association. "Happiness is not a set of desirable life circumstances. It’s a way of traveling." Diener’s new book, Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth, written with his son, Robert Biswas-Diener, a life coach, offers guidance for those interested in taking a road trip.

    As the Dieners synthesize the latest research—something Ed has steeped himself in as former editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies—they challenge the conventional party line on well-being: Money does matter, they conclude; religion, not necessarily. And marriage is hardly the joy girder it’s been cracked up to be. “

     

    Shop at Amazon for:
    Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth
    by: Ed Diener

    “Happiness is a process, not a place. That’s one of the key concepts that leaps from Happiness: Unlocking The Mysteries Of Psychological Wealth by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas- Diener.” (Diana’s Blog: Quirky Words and Book)

    “In their sweeping new book Diener and his son, Robert Biswas-Diener, distill the results of worldwide research into happiness and come up with an explanation, a recipe, for a sustained state of good feeling, psychological wealth, as they call it.” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 2008)

    Shop at Amazon for:
    Assessing Well-Being: The Collected Works of Ed Diener (Social Indicators Research Series)
    by:

    		The collected works of Ed Diener, in 3 volumes, present the major works of the leading research scientist studying happiness and well-being. Professor Diener has studied subjective well-being, people’s life satisfaction and positive emotions, for over a quarter of a century, and has published 200 works on the topic, many more than any other scholar. He has studied hundreds of thousands of people in over 140 nations of the world, and the collected works present the major findings from those studies. Diener has made many of the major discoveries about well-being, which are outlined in the chapters.

    How to Make the Best Use of Your Personal Strengths

     Positive Psychology  No Responses »
    Dec 082009
     
    image Source: Positive Psychology Services – Robert Biswas-Diener

    Identify your strengths – Be introspective – take a formal strengths inventory such as VIA, SDI

    Concentrate on strengths, while managing weaknesses. This works better than focusing on reversing weaknesses.

    Put a name to your strengths and describe the ways you apply them effectively.

    imageCreate a plan for developing your strengths and execute it persistently.

    Consciously employ your constellation of strengths to balance your weaknesses.

    Read the complete article PDF

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