When people think about what they want, it often has to do with improving their circumstances. People assume they’ll be happier if they could have a situation that includes things like the ones listed above.

I’m pretty sure Ed Diener ( “Dr. Happiness” ) has done more scientific research on happiness than anyone, and is considered by many the world’s foremost authority. Recently he wrote a book on the subject with his son, Robert Biswas-Diener ( “The Indiana Jones of Positive Psychology” ), who has also done some interesting research on happiness all over the world. If you want to be happier, it might make sense to listen to what they have to say.

The book is called Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth.

Part 1 (of 4 parts), “Understanding True Wealth,” includes Chapter 2: “Two Principles of Psychological Wealth.” The excerpts below are from their discussion of the first principle.

Caveat Emptor: Bad Stuff Happens … Even to Princesses

Take a moment and recall the classic story of Cinderella. Remember how she was cruelly mistreated by her stepsisters and their wicked mother? Do you recall how they made her slave away at the daily household chores? Remember how the dress she labored so hard over was torn to shreds in a fit of jealousy, and her hopes of going to the royal ball lay in tatters? Of course, you probably best remember the happy ending of the fairy tale: Cinderella’s magical godmother arrives in the nick of time, whisks her away to the dance, and engineers a quick infatuation, with the result that the beloved protagonist marries the charming prince. But is that the end of the story, or just the beginning?

It is interesting to consider what happened to Cinderella next, after she was betrothed and took up residence in Charming Castle. For people who believe that happiness is a matter of favorable circumstances, the story of Cinderella turns out to be a slam dunk. With a Hollywood-handsome husband, a royal title, all the riches she could want, and soldiers to guard her from the paparazzi, how could our belle of the ball not be happy? But for folks who are inclined to think of happiness as a process, the matter of Cinderella’s emotional fate is far from clear. Did Cinderella’s husband treat her well, or was he a philanderer in later life? Did she find some meaningful pastime to keep her occupied on the palace grounds? Were her children spoiled brats? Did she harbor resentment about her upbringing, or try to get revenge on her stepsisters? Did she grow bored with royal balls and court intrigue, or did she organize a dance program for the poor kids in her kingdom? Happiness, as we have said, is a process, not a destination. Just as Cinderella’s life did not end with her royal wedding, your emotional bliss is not complete once you have obtained some important goal. Life goes on, and even those great circumstances you achieve will not ensure you lasting happiness. For one thing, bad things can happen even to beautiful young princesses. But even if Cinderella’s life encountered few bumps on the fairyland road, she might have grown bored with the wonderful circumstances surrounding her, and needed new aims and activities to add zest to her life.

In the end, Cinderella’s quality of life was probably dictated less by her favorable circumstances and more by how she construed them. Hardships are an inevitable part of life, and having psychological wealth does not mean there are never any risks or losses. Of course there are. Happiness is not the complete absence of tough times, because that would be unrealistic. But, as we shall see later in this chapter and later in this book, negative emotions have a place in psychological wealth, and subjective interpretation plays an important role in happiness.

-Diener and Biswas-Diener, Happiness, pp. 16-17
(Chapter 2: Two Principles of Psychological Wealth)

Cinderella seemed to end up with a lot of the things we want (and don’t we spend a lot of time trying to get them?): money, prestige, a good-looking romantic partner, security. She was “successful”; she had “arrived.” But research on happiness is showing that good circumstances (even those of storybook quality) don’t necessarily have a lot to do with how happy people are. Of course, goals are important, but happiness is more about the process than it is about where you end up.

The next section in the book, a kind of thought experiment, illustrates this nicely.

Needing the Rigors of the Game

We sometimes ask our students whether they would accept the following pact with a genie. After floating out of his lamp, he offers to give you everything you desire, and as soon as the wish comes into your head, without the typical three-wish limit. The smirking genie says that anything you want will instantly come to you. You can’t wish for happiness, and you can’t wish that you will need to work for things to obtain them: no trickery of this type is allowed. Just solid old-school wishing for gold, castles, travel, beauty, friends, sports talent, intelligence, musical talent, good-looking dates, fast cars, and the like is permitted. Of course, most students wave their hands wildly, signaling that of course they would accept this great offer. Undoubtedly they are thinking of school loans, good grades, summers in Paris, and body fat. But – typically – as the class discussion proceeds, doubts begin to creep in. Maybe this all-wishes-granted deal, having everything and working for nothing, would become boring. Maybe you would adapt to all your blessings and they would no longer produce happiness. The discussion proceeds a bit further, and a few students begin to think the infinite-wishes deal might be hell on earth. Things would become boring, they reason, and life would lose its zest.

Students’ qualms about receiving everything without effort express our intuitive understanding that working for things we desire can be part of the pleasure of obtaining them. Just as climbing the mountain may be the major part of the fun, and simply being boosted to the top by a genie would be much less rewarding, much in life might be more meaningful and rewarding because of the efforts needed to obtain it. Not only will the eventual reward be more exciting, but the activities needed to gain the reward can themselves be very rewarding. The former justice of the United States Supreme Court Benjamin Cardozo expressed this well: “In the end the great truth will have been learned: that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer than the prize (or, rather, that the effort is the prize), the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game.” The renowned justice went beyond saying that the goal-seeking activities enhance the final reward; he claimed that these activities are in fact the prize itself!

-Diener and Biswas-Diener, Happiness, pp. 17-18
(Chapter 2: Two Principles of Psychological Wealth)

You’ve probably heard the saying “Life’s a journey, not a destination.” The quotation is from Ralph Waldo Emerson, but it was also popularized by Aerosmith. If you do a Google search for “journey, not a destination” you’ll get a lot of interesting variations – other things that are “…a journey, not a destination”:

• Success
• Excellence
• Fitness
• Leadership
• Sustainability
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
• Windows Vista Security

But the most popular variation that comes up in the first few pages of Google is:

“Happiness is a journey, not a destination.”

This is also the essence of the first principle of Psychological Wealth.

Related Articles:

• Two Principles of Psychological Wealth, part 2: Happiness as a Valuable Resource
• Dr. Happiness and the Indiana Jones of positive psychology
• Can money buy happiness?
• First step: What do you really want?

Dear Authentic Happiness Member: We are happy to announce that the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at the University of Pennsylvania is now accepting applications for the 2010-2011 academic year. We are looking for the next class to join the more than 190 students who have enrolled in this extraordinary program in the five years since its inception and who are now applying positive psychology in education, medicine, law, business, psychotherapy, counseling, coaching, consulting, and elsewhere.  Some of our younger students are now enrolled in Ph.D., J.D., or M.D. programs to further their training before engaging in the practice of positive psychology. Because MAPP is offered on an executive education model, most of our students continue to work full time during the year and commute to Philadelphia – from across the United States and as far away as Mexico, the UK, Sudan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand! – for the on-site classes.  While many students have already earned other master’s degrees or even Ph.D.’s, only a Bachelor’s degree is required for admission. If you hold at least a Bachelor’s degree (or will complete one this spring), have an excellent academic record, and are interested in learning about positive psychology and its applications from leading researchers and practitioners in the field, we invite you to find out more about our program.  If you think the program may be a good fit for you, we encourage you to submit an application before the deadline of March 1, 2010. For more information about our program, please visit our website at http://www.pennpositivepsych.org In addition to general program information, the website contains a link to a recorded Virtual Information Session that features input from administrators, professors, and students of the MAPP program. Please feel free to pass this message along to anyone else you know who might be interested in this program. Whatever you choose to do in this New Year, we hope it will be one of authentic happiness for you and yours. Sincerely, Marty Seligman Director Positive Psychology Center University of Pennsylvania James Pawelski Director of Education and Senior Scholar Positive Psychology Center University of Pennsylvania

Related Articles:

• Positive Psychology online course
• Gratitude may be “the ultimate positive emotion”
• Gratitude Visit
• Eight ways gratitude boosts happiness

I was told that there weren’t any available at that time, but was happy to go on a mailing list (something I should start for this blog) to hear about future programs. Well, I just learned that there will be another online course in Positive Psychology this summer, led again by professor Tal Ben-Shahar, whose class on Positive Psychology at Harvard went from 8 students the first year to being the most popular course on campus two years later.

This upcoming class is open-enrollment, and has no pre-requisites. It’s completely online, so anyone in the world with an Internet connection can participate. In fact, people from over 50 countries around the world have already done so. I was part of a similar online / conference call course several years ago, and it was interesting to have participants from all over the U.S. as well as from other countries, even in my own discussion section. I wrote about that course and other programs in a previous post on “Positive Psychology courses.”

Tal Ben-Shahar’s online Positive Psychology course information:

Name: “Foundations of Positive Psychology”

Dates: June 7 – August 27, 2010 (12 weeks)

Tuition cost: $895

School: College of Liberal and Professional Studies, University of Pennsylvania

Registration: Now open

The email I received says:

Examine the history and scientific underpinnings of this intriguing field and learn how its principles have been used to enhance work and home life. This course will blend the rigor of academia and the accessibility of self-help to guide people to lead more satisfying, more meaningful, happier lives.

And goes on…

This course allows you to:

• Progress at your own pace or follow a weekly schedule.
• Communicate with the instructor, course facilitators, and classmates via blogs and discussion forums.
• Join live, interactive events.
• Create your own social networks.

Exciting features include:

• High quality streaming video lectures.
• Twitter-like live discussions with fellow students.
• Flexibility in the depth and breadth of content explored.
• Expert researchers and practitioners for instructors and course facilitation

And here are a couple of testimonials from students who’ve taken this online course in the past:

“The course has exceeded my expectations by a long shot! Tal’s lectures are well organized and I especially appreciated the routine grounding of the material in research. I have learned very much about myself and the concepts of Positive Psychology. I genuinely feel the course has changed my life. It has inspired me to enroll in the MPOD program at Case Western this fall!”

-Kevin, Assistant Dean for Planning and Institutional Effectiveness
Doha, Qatar

“It’s one thing to hear of the claims made by Positive Psychology. It’s quite another to have a world renowned expert walk you through the rich research that backs up those claims. Tal connected rigorous science with useful, daily applications of Positive Psychology.”

-Director of Professional Development at an Experiential Educational Institution
Estes Park, Colorado, USA

(Read more testimonials.)

For more information, and for course and registration details, go to U Penn’s Liberal and Professional Studies web site.

Related Articles:

• Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) now accepting applications
• Gratitude Visit
• Gratitude may be “the ultimate positive emotion”
• Can money buy happiness?

In her book The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, Sonja Lyubomirsky discusses eight ways gratitude boosts happiness.

Here’s what she had to say in more detail, interspersed with my comments:

First, grateful thinking promotes the savoring of positive life experiences. By relishing and taking pleasure in some of the gifts of your life, you will be able to extract the maximum possible satisfaction and enjoyment from your current circumstances. When my first child was only a few months old, an older woman approached me while I was struggling with the stroller. “Your baby is so beautiful,: she said. “appreciate this age; it goes by so fast!” At the time I was feeling overwhelmed an sleep-deprived and, to be honest, didn’t much appreciate her glib intrusion, but it had a powerful effect. Taking time to feel grateful for this small child allowed me to step outside the dreariness of my long days caring for her and to savor the magic of the small moment I shared with my daughter.

Part of happiness is evaluating the past. Was it meaningful? Was it a rich experience? Savoring positive life experiences helps expand the story of your life, filling out the good parts and making the overall tone more positive.

Second, expressing gratitude bolsters self-worth and self-esteem. When
you realize how much people have done for you or how much you have accomplished, you feel more confident and efficacious. Unfortunately, for many people, it comes more naturally to focus on failures and disappointments or on other people’s slights and hurts. Gratefulness can help you
unlearn this habit. Instead of automatically thinking, “Woe is me,” in response to any setback, the practice of gratitude encourages you instead to consider what you value about your current life or how you are thankful that things aren’t worse.

Considering what you value about your current life, realizing that your accomplishments are a combination of others’ help as well as your own talents and efforts – and being grateful not only for what people have done for you but for what you’ve been able to accomplish – can give you a greater sense of confidence, self-esteem, and self-worth. What others have done and what you’ve done have completely merged, combining into something meaningful and valuable.

Third, gratitude helps people cope with stress and trauma. That is, the ability to appreciate your life circumstances may be an adaptive coping method by which you positively reinterpret stressful or negative life experiences.⁵ Indeed, traumatic memories are less likely to surface – and are less intense when they do – in those who are regularly grateful.⁶ Interestingly, people instinctively express gratitude when confronted with adversity. For example, in the days immediately after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, gratitude was found to be the second most commonly experienced emotion (after sympathy).⁷

Expressing gratefulness during personal adversity like loss or chronic illness, as hard as that might be, can help you adjust, move on, and perhaps begin anew. Although it may be challenging to celebrate your blessings at moments when they seem least apparent to you, it may be the most important thing that you can do. In one of my recent courses, I had a severely disabled older student named Brian. He has some mobility, but not much, in his hands and is able to control a wheelchair by pressing on a lever located near his shoulder with his bent right hand. One day the class was going around the room and talking about their happiest moments in life. This is what Brian said: “My happiest moment is kind of a perverse one. It was the day that I came home from the hospital, after my accident. I felt defiant. I said, ‘Ha! I’m still alive! I beat you!’ I don’t know who exactly I beat. But I felt grateful that I was home. It seemed like a little thing, but being home from the hospital after four months was so good.” Echoing this perspective, sixty-seven-year-old Inger, who had been given a short time to live, described her illness this way: “When you can hear the minutes ticking and you know the buzzer is going to go off in any minute and your time will be up, you see things so clearly. You just know without a doubt where your values are and why you’re alive, and you’re so grateful for each moment.”⁸ Inger and Brian have a remarkable capacity for gratitude, a capacity that undoubtedly serves them well in both sickness and health.

Gratitude helps you stay in better balance. When things are really tough, of course you need to deal with the specific difficulties as best you can, but being grateful for the good things helps you to keep perspective and emotional resilience. There are always a lot of things other than the problems that are good. And some problems even have a silver lining.

Fourth, the expression of gratitude encourages moral behavior. As I mentioned earlier, grateful people are more likely to help others (e.g., you become aware of kind and caring acts and feel compelled to reciprocate) and less likely to be materialistic (e.g., you appreciate what you have and become less fixated on acquiring more stuff). To wit, an Auschwitz survivor was once described this way: “His life was rooted in gratitude. He was generous, because the memory of having nothing was never far from his mind.”⁹ In one study, people induced to be grateful for a specific kind act were more likely to be helpful toward their benefactor, as well as toward a stranger, even when the helping involved doing an unpleasant, tedious chore.¹⁰

Negative emotion is needed to deal with threats. But positive emotion broadens and builds. Gratitude can make you feel more full. You have more; you want to give, to provide benefit.

Fifth, gratitude can help build social bonds, strengthening existing relationships and nurturing new ones.¹¹ Keeping a gratitude journal, for example, can produce feelings of greater connectedness with others. Several studies have shown that people who feel gratitude toward particular individuals (even when they never directly express it) experience closer and “higher-quality” relationships with them,¹² As Robert Emmons argues, when you become truly aware of the value of your friends and family members, you are likely to treat them better, perhaps producing an “upward spiral,” a sort of positive feedback loop, in which strong relationships give you something to be grateful for, and in turn fortifying those very same relationships. In addition, a grateful person is a more positive person, and positive people are better liked by others and more likely to win friends.¹³

Take a minute to think about (or even write down) several reasons to be grateful about each of the important people in your life. Cultivating gratitude toward these people is likely to have a positive impact on your attitude toward them as well as how you treat them. When you treat them better they’re more likely to treat you better. Magic.

Sixth, expressing gratitude tends to inhibit invidious comparisons with others. If you are genuinely thankful and appreciative for what you have (e.g., family, health, home), you are less likely to pay close attention to or envy what the Joneses have.

When you really think about it, there is so much to be grateful for and to appreciate. If you’re reading this, you’re probably not starving, at severe risk because of lack of protection from the elements, or in imminent danger because of a war or calamity. You’ve probably been shielded from virtually all of the most urgent and severe problems people have been dealing with throughout history. Some problems remain, but relatively speaking, life is good.

Seventh, the practice of gratitude is incompatible with negative emotions and may actually diminish or deter such feelings as anger, bitterness, and greed.¹⁴ As one psychiatrist has argued, “gratitude . . . dissolves negative feelings: anger and jealousy melt in its embrace, fear and defensiveness shrink.”¹⁵ Indeed, it’s hard to feel guilty or resentful or infuriated when you’re feeling grateful. My friend’s sister is one of the few working moms I know who feel not an ounce of guilt. The reason is that she is a prodigy at asking friends and family for help and thanking them so profusely and sincerely afterward that they feel like rock stars.

Gratitude is not a matter of tricking yourself into focusing on the positive instead of the negative. (But even if it were, the paragraph above still holds true!) We usually think our bad moods are justified, but emotion can often be changed completely when we realize the facts underlying our assumptions are different from what we thought. Sometimes by examining the facts and seeing them in a different light, there are good reasons to be grateful. This gratitude can help clear away the remaining negative emotion that doesn’t need to be there any more.

Last but not least, gratitude helps us thwart hedonic adaptation. If you recall, hedonic adaptation is illustrated by our remarkable capacity to adjust rapidly to any new circumstance or event. This is extremely adaptive when the new event is unpleasant, but not when a new event is positive. So, when you gain something good in your life – a romantic partner, a genial officemate, recovery from illness, a brand-new car – there is an immediate boost in happiness and contentment. Unfortunately, because of hedonic adaptation, that boost is usually short-lived. As I’ve argued earlier, adaptation to all things positive is essentially the enemy of happiness, and one of the keys to becoming happier lies in combating its effects, which gratitude does quite nicely. By preventing people from taking the good things in their lives for granted – from adapting to their positive life circumstances – the practice of gratitude can directly counteract the effects of hedonic adaptation.

Human beings are very good at adapting. For a lot of things good and bad, you get used to the new situation pretty quickly. How do you make good things last? One way is pursuing things that actually are more likely to make you happier in the long run. The other is by cultivating gratitude, which seems to renew (to some extent) the benefit of the good thing by reviving our appreciation for it.

*For a technical discussion of psychological studies which have addressed the question of whether gratitude produces greater happiness, see Does Gratitude cause Happiness? A Meta-analysis.”

Footnotes:

5. Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., and Larkin, G. R. (2003). What good are positive emotions in crises?: A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 11, 2001. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84: 365-76.

6. Watkins, P. C., Grimm, D. L., and Kolts, R. (2004). Counting your blessings: Positive memories among grateful persons. Current Psychology: Developmental, Learning, Personality, Social, 23: 52-67.

7. Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., & Larkin, G. (2003). What good are positive emotions in crises?: A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11th, 2001. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 365-376.

8. Malin, A. (2003, September). Maximum joy: 14 ways to feel lucky you’re alive. Prevention.

9. Casey, M. J. (2006, October 20). A survivor’s optimism. New York Times.

10. Bartlett, M. Y, and DeSteno, D. (2006). Gratitude and prosocial behavior: Helping when it costs you. Psychological Science, 17: 319-25.

11. McCullough, M.E., Bellah, G.C., Kilpatrick, S.D., & Johnson, J.L. (2001). Vengefulness: Relationships with forgiveness, rumination, well-being, and the Big Five. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 601-610. Emmons, R.A., McCullough, M.E. (2003) Counting Blessings Versus Burdens: An Experimental Investigation of Gratitude and Subjective Well-Being in Daily Life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 84 (2), pp. 377-389.

12. Algoe, S. B., Haidt, J., Gable, S. L., and Strachman, A. (2007). Beyond reciprocity: Gratitude and relationships in everyday life. Manuscript under review.

13. Lyubomirsky, S., King, L. A., & Diener, E. (2005). The benefits of frequent positive affect: Does happiness lead to success? Psychological Bulletin, 131, 803-855.

14. McCullough, M.E., Emmons, R.A., and Tsang, J. (2002). The grateful disposition: A conceptual and empirical topography. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82: 112-27.

15. Quote from psychiatrist Roger Walsh.

Related Articles:

• Sonja Lyubomirsky and the How of Happiness
• Gratitude Visit
• Life Satisfaction – measure yours
• Gratitude may be “the ultimate positive emotion”

You might remember the character played by Molly Shannon on Saturday Night Live, licensed joyologist Helen Madden. What you might not know is now you can get a professional graduate degree from an Ivy League university studying a curriculum based on research on happiness. This is not some single course with what sounds like a crackpot title you occasionally hear about in news reports. It’s a respected masters degree based on peer-reviewed science by leading researchers.

“Positive Psychology” is an expansion of psychology’s focus beyond a disease model, to understand how normal people can be happier, how individuals and communities can thrive. Professor Martin Seligman is a former president of the American Psychological Association, the 13th most frequently cited psychologist in introductory psychology textbooks throughout the 20th century, and the leader of the modern “positive psychology” movement, having brought this effort into focus in the research arena. He and others at the University of Pennsylvania have created the first Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program. (Visit the Positive Psychology Center and see “Educational Programs” for more information.)

UPDATE: I’ve posted a letter about the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at Penn in another article.

What even fewer people know is that before the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program existed, Martin Seligman led an extended semester online / conference-call course which was a condensed version of this material. It was coordinated by Ben Dean, Ph.D., founder of Coaching Toward Happiness. Like the MAPP, it was attended by professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds. It had a large contingent of professional coaches such as executive and especially life coaches. The course name, “Authentic Happiness Coaching,” combined Martin Seligman’s “Authentic Happiness” (web site, best-selling book) with Ben Dean’s focus on coaching. It was offered four times if I remember correctly, and I was privileged to participate in the third and fourth courses.

Obviously the MAPP course goes into much greater depth, and students also come from all over, but I enjoyed what I assume was a greater diversity in terms of location. As an online / conference-call course, we were able to have a number of participants from other countries, in addition to every corner of the U.S.

Guest lecturers included many of the most well-known researchers in positive psychology, who talked about the most compelling aspects of their work. Others involved in the course were very interesting people too. Dr. Tayyab Rashid worked with Dr. Seligman on research at the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, but to me what was special about him was his depth and insight, as well as a quality of warmth that made people feel at home. He was my discussion section leader. One of the students I corresponded with afterward was Dr. Howard C. Cutler, co-author with the Dalai Lama of The Art of Happiness.

This wasn’t the first or last project Ben Dean has undertaken. He always seems to have a course or a lecture featuring one of the stars of positive psychology coming along. Typically the lectures are by phone “bridge” conference-call, and questions can be emailed beforehand, but at any time Ben might open the floor electronically for a question. Sometimes there are hundreds of participants, so in such cases participation is limited, but it’s impressive to see, and Ben handles it well.

Sometimes Ben will arrange for a positive psychology superstar to do an interview or a presentation that’s free. All you have to do is register and make a call to the number in New York. (Even if you pay 5 cents a minute, that’s only $3 for an hour.) Last week he had Ed Diener and Sonja Lyubomirsky on for a two-hour interview.

Ben also gives one-day workshops in major cities, runs “Foundations” coach training classes as well as advanced classes taught by guest faculty, and provides coach certification. He even wrote a book with Robert Biswas-Diener that came out last year, Positive Psychology Coaching: Putting the Science of Happiness to Work for Your Clients.

Go to www.coachingtowardhappiness.com and you can sign up for his free newsletter. If you’re interested in coaching, check out www.mentorcoach.com.

UPDATE: See my comment below about the Positive Psychology online course through the University of Pennsylvania.

Related Articles:

• Blog about positive psychology, happiness research, and how to apply it
• Two Principles of Psychological Wealth, part 2: Happiness as a Valuable Resource
• Positive Psychology online course
• Can money buy happiness?