Martin Seligman has an interesting book out called Flourish. Its strapline is “This book will help you flourish”. Now, I have to own up to a knee-jerk prejudice about books with these sorts of titles. But while the book may be self-help, it is grounded in research. Seligman is a pretty distinguished academic, and his work on Flourishing and positive psychology has persuaded the US Army to adopt his tricks.
All of which blethering on is to say : “It’s well worth a read” and “here comes the first of many snippets I thought interesting”.
“A mood view of happiness consigns 50 percent of the world’s population who are ‘low-positive affectives’ to the hell of unhappiness. Even though they lack cheerfulness, this low-mood half may have more engagement and more meaning in life than merry people. Introverts are much less cheery than extroverts. The decision to build a circus rather than a library based on how much additional happiness will be produced counts those capable of a cheerful mood more heavily than those less capable. A theory that counts increases in in engagement and meaning along with increases in positive emotion is morally liberating as well as more democratic for public policy. And it turns out that life satisfaction does not take into account how much meaning we have or how engaged we are in our work or how engaged we are with people we love. Life satisfaction essentially measures cheerful mood, so it is not entitled to a central place in any theory that aims to be more than a happiology.“