Building on strengths is a cornerstone of positive psychology, but it is only one of three pathways the field says leads to happiness:
- Positive emotion: This is the classic definition of happiness, meaning that feeling of joy that makes us smile.
- Engagement: This occurs when we're so interested and passionate about something that we perceive time passing faster than at other periods. It's what positive psychology calls "flow." Happiness is achieved by finding out what puts you in the "flow" and doing more of it.
- Meaning: This happens when we connect to something larger than ourselves -- such as family, community, religion, an idea or a social movement -- and we use our strengths to serve that greater entity.
These three qualities broaden the definition of happiness to include not just the feeling of excitement or elation -- which is how we usually characterize happiness -- but also to encompass the deeper meanings of contentment and fulfillment, Reivich said in a telephone interview from her Philadelphia, Pa., home.
And, she said, there are exercises everyone can do to increase these qualities. For example, to build up positive emotion, at the end of each day, list three good things that happened.
People studied while doing this exercise for two weeks experienced "significant decreases in depression and significant increases in happiness," Reivich said. "They're going from sad to feeling good."
"The nice thing about these exercises is that they seem to be easy-to-form habits," said the coauthor of The Resilience Factor (Broadway Books, 2003).
"As a species, we seem to be more hard-wired to pay attention to the bad stuff than to the good stuff. So at the end of the day, you're lying in bed thinking of all the stuff, big and small, that didn't go well that day."
That's why happiness in the traditional sense is elusive, said Alan Gates, director of intensive outpatient services at Laureate Psychiatric Clinic and Hospital in Tulsa, Okla.
"So we focus on the word contentment, not happiness," Gates said, adding that contentment means being aware of problems, setting boundaries and making rational choices.
Positive psychology is based on the debated belief that some people can feel positive emotions -- the traditional denominator of happiness -- more than others.
It says that just as everyone has a set range for body weight, we all have a set range for feeling happiness. It's higher for some than for others.
Although some people can't feel a high range of positive emotions, Reivich said, positive psychology offers ways to increase the other two pathways to happiness -- engagement and meaning in life.
"So even if you are someone who is never going to be off the charts in happiness," Reivich said, "where you don't experience really intense moments of joy, you can still have a very satisfying, enriching and wonderful life by focusing on engagement and meaning."
Online Help
An online self-improvement program based on positive psychology is available at www.reflectivehappiness.com. On this site, users can do happiness-building exercises, discover their inner strengths and learn how to use them, and even team up with a "virtual partner" who already has gone through some or all of the program.
The program requires membership, which is free for the first month and then $9.95 for each following month ... of those members who did the first happiness-building exercise, 94 percent had a decrease in depression, and 92 percent increased their happiness, the site reports.
More on using positive psychology in daily life can be found at http://www.authentichappiness.com, which does not require membership.
Please note that online participation is not a substitute for regular therapeutic treatment.
Source: Tulsa World. Powered by Yellowbrix.
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