Authentic Happiness

Below are a few of the passages I highlighted as I read Authentic Happiness.

• If you'd like to check out Seligman's Authentic Happiness web site, click here.
• If you'd like to order a copy of the book from Amazon.com, click here.

From Chapter 7: Happiness in the Present

Inject into your life as many events that produce pleasure as you can, but spread them out, letting more time elapse between them than you normally do. If you find that your desire to engage in a particular pleasure diminishes to zero (or below, to aversion) when you space it far enough apart, you are probably dealing with an addiction and not a pleasure. (p 106)

Surprise, as well as spacing, keeps pleasures from habituating. Try to take yourself by surprise -- or, even better, arrange it so that the people you live with or otherwise see frequently surprise each other with "presents" of the pleasures. It does not need to be on the scale of a dozen roses from the florist. An unexpected cup of coffee will do, but it is worth five minutes each day to create a pleasing little surprise for your spouse, your children, or a co worker...(p 107).

Savoring, for Bryant and Veroff, is the awareness of pleasure and of the deliberate conscious attention to the experience of pleasure. (p 107)

From testing thousands of undergraduates, these authors detail five techniques that promote savoring:

• Sharing with others
• Memory-building
• Self-congratulation
• Sharpening perceptions
• Absorption (p 108)

In ordinary English, we do not distinguish between the gratifications and the pleasures. this is truly a shame, because it muddles together two different classes of the best things in life, and it deceives us into thinking they can each be had in the same way. (p 111)

It is the total absorption, the suspension of consciousness, and the flow that the gratifications produce that defines liking these activities -- not the presence of pleasure. Total immersion, in fact, blocks consciousness, and emotions are completely absent. (p 111)

The pleasures are about the senses and the emotions. The gratifications, in contrast, are about enacting personal strengths and virtues. (p 112)

Here are the [psychological components of gratifications]:

• The task is challenging and requires skill
• We concentrate
• There are clear goals
• We get immediate feedback
• We have deep, effortless involvement
• There is a sense of control
• Our sense of self vanishes
• Time stops (p 116)

When we engage in pleasures, we are perhaps just consuming...In contrast, when we are engaged (absorbed in [the] flow [of gratifications]), perhaps we are investing, building psychological capital for our future. (p 116)

The low-flow teenagers are "mall" kids: they hang out at malls and they watch television a lot. The high-flow kids have hobbies, they engage in sports, and they spend a lot of time on homework. (p 117)

The high-flow kids are the ones who make it to college, who have deeper social ties, and whose later lives are more successful. (p 117)

From Chapter 9: Your Signature Strengths

Strengths, such as integrity, valor, originality, and kindness, are not the same things as talents, such as perfect pitch, facial beauty, or lightning fast sprinting speed...[S]trengths are moral traits, while talents are nonmoral. In addition, although the line is fuzzy, talents are generally not as buildable as strengths. (p134)

Building strengths and virtues and using them in daily life are very much a matter of making choices. (p136)

Here are some of the criteria by which we know that a characteristic is a strength:
[Note: these have been arranged in a bulleted list for clarity. They do not appear this way in the book.]

• First, a strength is a trait, a psychological characteristic that can be seen across different situations and over time.
• Second, a strength is valued in its own right... Strengths also can be seen in what parents wish for their newborn...
• The display of a strength by one person does not diminish other people in the vicinity.
• The culture supports strengths...
• Role models and paragons in the culture compellingly illustrate a strength or virtue.
• Some of the strengths have prodigies, youngsters who display them early on and amazingly well.
• Our final criterion for the strengths below is that they are ubiquitous, valued in almost every culture in the world. (p 137-139)

The 24 strengths:

• Wisdom and Knowledge

1. Curiosity/Interest in the World
2. Love of Learning
3. Judgment/Critical Thinking/Open-Mindedness
4. Ingenuity originality/Practical Intelligence/Street Smarts
5. Social Intelligence/Personal Intelligence/Emotional Intelligence
6. Perspective

• Courage

1. Valor and Bravery
2. Perseverance/Industry/Diligence
3. Integrity/Genuineness/Honesty

• Humility and Love

1. Kindness and Generosity
2. Loving and allowing oneself to be loved

• Justice

1. Citizenship/Duty/Teamwork/Loyalty
2. Fairness and Equity
3. Leadership

• Temperance

1. Self-control
2. Prudence/Discretion/Caution
3. Humility and Modesty

• Transcendence

1. Appreciation of Beauty and Excellence
2. Gratitude
3. Hope/Optimism/Future-Mindedness
4. Spirituality/Sense of Purpose/Faith/Religiousness
5. Forgiveness and Mercy
6. Playfulness and Humor
7. Zest/Passion/Enthusiasm (p 140-161)

From Chapter 10: Work and Personal Satisfaction

If you can find a way to use your signature strengths at work often, and you also see your work as contributing to the greater good, you have a calling. (p 173)

Lawyers, likewise, cannot easily turn off their character trait of prudence (or pessimism) when they leave the office. Lawyers who can see clearly how badly things might turn out for their clients can also see clearly how badly things might turn out for themselves... In this manner, pessimism that is adaptive in the profession brings in its wake a very high risk of depression in personal life. (p 179)

The deepest of all the psychological factors making lawyers unhappy is that American law has become increasingly a win-loss game. (p 180)

Lawyers are trained to be aggressive, judgmental, intellectual, analytical and emotionally detached. This produces predictable emotional consequences for the legal practitioner: he or she will be depressed, anxious, and angry a lot of the time. (p 180-181)

The key move is credible disputation: treating the catastrophic thoughts ("I'll never make partner," "My husband is probably unfaithful") as if they were uttered by an external person whose mission is to make your life miserable, and then marshaling evidence against the thoughts. (p 181)

From Chapter 11: Love

...the best four [books about relationships] in my opinion are:

• Reconcilable Differences by Andrew Christensen and Neil Jacobson
• The Relationship Cure by John Gottman with Joan DeClaire
• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman with Nan Silver
• Fighting for Your Marriage by Howard Markman, Scott Stanley and Susan Blumberg (p 196)

John Gottman...is my favorite marriage researcher.

The harbingers [of divorce] are as follows:

• A harsh startup in a disagreement
• Criticism of partner, rather than complaints
• Displays of contempt
• Hair-trigger defensiveness
• Lack of validation
• Negative body language (p 197)

[Gottman] finds that [successful] couples devote an extra five hours per week to their marriage.

• Partings ( 2 minutes * 5 mornings = 10 minutes)
• Reunions (20 minutes * 5 evenings = 40 minutes)
• Affection (5 minutes * 7 days = 35 minutes)
• One Weekly date (2 hours * 1 week = 2 hours)
• Admiration and appreciation (5 minutes * 7 days = 35 minutes) (p 197)

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, by John Gottman and Nan Silver, is my single favorite marriage manual. (p 198)

The crucial measure is the discrepancy between what your partner believes about your strengths and what your friends believe. The bigger the discrepancy in a positive direction, the bigger the romantic "illusion" that your partner has of you.

Remarkably, the bigger the illusion, the happier and more stable the relationship.