The Jakarta Post - Weekender

The search for happiness is on. Two years ago, Martin Seligman — the head of Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania — gathered a few of his colleagues in Akumal, Mexico, to discuss the “joys of being alive”. Today, more than 200 colleges and graduate schools in the U.S. are offering classes in this new branch of psychology: the science of happiness.

What have they come up with so far?

“Doing good is good for you”
Todd Kashdan, a psychology professor at George Mason University, makes a distinction between “feeling good (which creates a hunger for more pleasure) and doing good (which can lead to lasting happiness)”.

Apparently, what gives you pleasure does not necessarily make you happy. Things like purchasing a new car, graduating summa cum laude from a prestigious university or getting engaged may seem to promise life-long happiness to the party involved, but leading experts say they have almost nothing to do with happiness.

“True happiness comes with meaning,” Kashdan was quoted as saying in the New York Times in an article, Happiness 101, published in January this year.

Martin Seligman, the president of the American Psychological Association, seconds Kashdan’s statement. According to him, positive psychology involves more than one person to whom we are connected through civic engagements, spirituality, hope and charity.

Christopher Peterson, who teaches at the University of Michigan, centralizes his studies on human strengths and virtues in the forms of generosity, gratitude, humor, zest for life and how they relate to the concept of happiness.

“Giving makes you feel good about yourself,” Peterson told Time magazine in 2005, “…it puts meaning into your life. You have a sense of purpose because you matter to someone else.”

In short, rather than shelling out for that daily venti latté, you might want to try visiting an orphanage and contribute what you can to the needy. If not for the sake of your own happiness, then perhaps for the universal goodness that seems to be in short supply nowadays.

“Happiness can be a negative energy”
Daniel Gilbert doesn’t like to be called a positive psychologist, although much of his work actually deals with proving and theorizing what makes people happy, and how happiness transforms our sense of awareness. His best-selling book, Stumbling on Happiness, discusses misguided perceptions regarding happiness and behavior.

According to Gilbert, we are wrong to assume our own reaction to things we have yet to experience. We are wrong to assume that the death of somebody close to us is going to devastate us for an infinite amount of time; we are wrong to assume that failing a certain exam will make us feel like the ultimate failure; and we are also wrong to assume that ordering a Happy Meal will make us smile for the rest of the day.

Most of all, we are wrong to assume that what we want is to always be happy.

As humans, Gilbert said, we are not designed to be perpetually happy. Even though we think it’s what we want, he insisted that for anyone to be in a state of happiness 24/7 would result in catastrophe.

“Emotions are a primitive signaling system. They’re how your brain tells you if you’re doing things that enhance, or diminish, your survival chances. What good is a compass if it’s always stuck on north?”

He gave the example of walking home in the middle of the night through a dark alley. “It’s not good to feel happy in a dark alley at night,” he was quoted as saying in the January-February 2007 edition of Harvard Magazine.

“You’re supposed to be moving through [different] emotional states. If someone offers you a pill that makes you happy 100 percent of the time, you should run fast in the other direction.”

In fact, those continually happy folks may have something wrong with them.

“There is consistent evidence that happy people overestimate their control over environmental events, give unrealistically positive evaluations of their own achievements, believe that others share their unrealistic opinions about themselves and show a general lack of evenhandedness when comparing themselves to others,” British psychologist Richard P. Benthall observed in a 2004 article published in Psychology Today.

He categorized a constant state of happiness as a psychiatric disorder.

Difficult as that statement may be to accept, it is not without basis. A psychological study in the U.S. found that the groups which have made the most profound progress in history, namely women and African-Americans, are also the ones that reported a significant decline in their levels of happiness. The theory is that with the increasing level of education and freedom (and therefore a much more fierce pursuit of happiness) a large increase in desire (which is often out of reach) follows suit, usually causing stress, disappointment and paranoia.

Meanwhile, in Asian states like Indonesia, China or the Philippines, where happiness is considered less of a goal and more of a God-given blessing, there are fewer reports of life contentment, yet the suicide rate is also much lower in comparison to many other countries.

Bliss in the moment
Some may think that happiness is a place one goes to and stays in forever; others argue that happiness is the sum of our total experiences in life, experts say that happiness actually stays in the moment and does not last.

Ellen Langer, author of On Becoming an Artist: Reinventing Yourself through Mindful Creativity, suggests that we should live in the present. Most of her books explore the theme of mindfulness, of taking a slower pace and recognizing one’s surroundings in order to be happy. “All you need to do is … notice new things,” she said, quoted by Harvard Magazine. “More than thirty years of research has shown that mindfulness is figuratively and literally enlivening. It’s the way you feel when you’re feeling passionate.”

Langer and Kashdan’s theory is that happiness can be found in the small moments of life, which often happens by noticing new things from one’s own surroundings and drawing new distinctions from them. Therefore, instead of rushing to work and complaining about pollution along the way, it might do us good to take a step back and see all the wonderful things we are blessed with. Like life itself.

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