What an ambitious project -- to collect a short essay from over 100 of the world's leading experts in positive psychology from 50 countries and compile them into a readable book for the lay person to peruse.
I will revisit some of these essays for thoughts I wanted to capture as "notes". I confess, my favorite aspect of the book were the many photograph illustrations that simply scream to be jigsaw puzzles! I also confess that it took me four and a half months of intermittent reading to complete this tome, which just goes to say that many of the essays were not particularly compelling, and in the end I felt that I receive a better scoop on happiness by reading the semi-annual conference talks from my church!
p.16 Christopher Peterson sums it up in three words: OTHER PEOPLE MATTER! -->don't look for happiness within yourself but in your involvement with others. -->cherish the people who are important to you -->realize that you too are always someone else's 'other'
p.25 Robert Biswas-Diener says, "maintaining flexible thinking about your failures can help you learn from them, frow from them, and ever transform them into successes. -->sometimes obstacles are related to how we have framed the goal in the first place. Set your goals clearly -->don't be ashamed to step back and re-evaluate your goal...Try to reframe a perceived failure in terms of success. -->imagine your life as a story that unfolds like a book, with yourself as the author.
p.32 Ernst Gehmacher talks about "addictive" happiness and "sustainable" happiness. The addictive happiness he frames in terms of pleasures or thrills such as drink and drugs, status and success, boring entertainment and lonely socializing. He frames sustainable happiness in terms of do-it-yourself, love and friendship, wealth and fitness, gaining friends and improving society. -->happiness grows when you are fit, have friends, and fun (doesn't define this) -->happiness must be learned
p.50 Dubravka Miljkovic and Majda Rijavec share their recipe of six essential and five optional ingredients:
1. a few good, reliable friends (and possibly one bad, just to be aware of the difference).
2. One (at a time!) stable loving relationship.
3. The challenge of a job that is matched to your skills.
4. Enough money to satisfy your basic needs ( and some non-basic ones--from time to time).
5. At least three good things on a daily basis.
6. Gratitude for having all of the above.
1. One or more kids (with an additional amount of gratitude).
2. (Mostly)one god and several saints.
3. Several additional years of education.
4. Physical and (more or less) mental health.
5. A few disappointments.
p.60 David G. Myers shares his "Ten Commandments of Happiness"
1. Realize that enduring happiness doesn't come from success.
2. Give priority to close relationships.
3. Seek work and leisure that engage your skills.
4. Take control of your time.
5. Act happy.
6. Join the 'movement' movement.
7. Give your body the sleep it wants.
8. Focus beyond the self.
9. Nurture your spiritual self.
10. Keep a gratitude journal.
p.115 Ahmed M. Adbel-Khalek summarizes his thoughts -->learn to love, enjoy and appreciate life, while striving to achieve the best for yourself and others -->religious affiliation and commitment are beneficial to a snese of personal well-being, happiness, self-esteem and overall adjustment.
p. 120 Prof. D.J.W Strumpfer encourages us to FEEL. Smitl! Laugh! But also cry. Keep eyes and ears open to the beauty around. Seek out beauty. LISTEN--to birds singing and WATCH their flight, SEE trees, plants and flowers, flowing water, clouds, sunrise and sunset. Listen to nature: water, rain, wind, thunder--but also to nature's silences. Attend carefully to what you touch, taste and smell--and EXPERIENCE these joys. Listen to music. Sing, whether you can or not.
Appreciate who you are and what you are. Believe in your own abilities. Do your best to remain optimistic and to find satisfaction and meaning in whatever you have to do, including your daily tasks. Guard your health: eat, drink and exercise sensibly. Search for insight: through discussion, listening, reading-but then think as well! What does it all mean to you?
Undeniably, life is also brimming with NEGATIVES: acute and chronic disease, disability, sorrow, death, disaster, bleak family, social, economic and political conditions--an uninterruped flow fo demands from bearable to devastating. Sometimes we languish there. However, we are RESILIENT beings: we are able to 'bounce back'--returning to where we were before--but also to 'bounce forward'--going beyond where we were at first. The very overcoming of inordinate demands is often a source of growth and of new strength for future hardships. Our strengths help us to bear up, to overcome, and eventually to FLOURISH again.
p. 138 Gary T. Reker T. Reker has 14 Fundamental Guidelines:
1. Be more active and keep busy.
2. Spend more time socialising.
3. Be productive at meaningful work.
4. Get better organised.
5. Stop worrying.
6. Lower your expectations and aspirations.
7. Develop positive, optimistic thinking.
8. Get present-oriented.
9. Work on a healthy personality.
10. Develop an outgoing, social personality.
11. Be yourself.
12. Eliminate the negative.
13. Close relationships are number one.
14. Value happiness.
p.147 Johannes Hirata quotes John Maynard Keynes saying, "It is better to be approximately right than to be precisely wrong." "Otherwise", says Hirate, "we would be like the drunk who lost his keys in the dark and looks for them under the streetlight, not because he believes he will find them there but because the light is better.
p.194 David Watson dubs his theory "The High Five of Happiness"...
1. Happiness largely reflects a person's inner outlook on life. It is best to focus on the good and positive aspects of one's life, rather than dwelling on the negative. It is very difficult to be happy if one spends a lot of time brooding about past mistakes, stewing over insults and frustrations, or worrying about bad things that might happen. Bad things do happen -- but focusing on them only makes them worse.
2. Envy is a powerful enemy of happiness. People who spend a lot of time comparing themselves to others find it a real challenge to be happy. Focus on what you have.
3. We are happier when we are connecting with other people. ... People with good support networks are much better able to withstand the effects of stress. Finding ways to help others is another good way to feel better about yourself and your life.
4. Have goals, interests or values that give your life meaning. ... One interesting paradox is that people devote much of their lives to striving after things-- money, education, success -- that ultimately have little actual effect on their happiness. This does not mean that this striving is a waste of time, however.
5. Physical activity improves a person's sense of inner well-being. ... Exercise does not have to be long or intense to be effective.
p.200 Joaquina Palomar shares this warning:
Individuals who do not know what they want or what they feel;
are unaware of or hide the problems which present themselves;
fail to clearly express their goals;
fail to understand or are not willing to pay the price necessary to achieve their goals;
become frustrated because their goals are not within their reach;
blame others for the origin of their misfortune;
are likely to be unhappy and will have very few opportunities to change their present and immediate future.
p.216 Jonathan Adler claims that we are the narrators of our lives and that the more we exercise agency in the unfolding stories of our lives the happier we become.
p.223 Eunkook M. Suh summarizes:
--> If you don't have a positive, optimistic and cheerful temperment, try copying it from others.
--> Build a rich social life--not as an obligation, but because it is rewarding, meaningful and fun.
p.230 Willibald Ruch has studied the effect of humor (or a sense of humor) on happiness, maintaining that it can help us through the bumps and foibles of life.
p.258 Katie Hanson says "flow" is the best teenage drug... defined, it is a term coined by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: It refers to an experience which is totally absorbing, so that time seems to pass in an instant and we become unaware of everything going on around us, even hunger, temperature and self-consciousness. Flow is thought to be highly beneficial for our happiness. The experience occurs when we become engaged in a challenging but controllable activity that requires a high level of skill. Activities which produce flow are intrinsically motivating and as a result they are valuable, in that they produce a state of being that is an end in itself.
p.272 Ilona Boniwell encourages us to make TIME our friend by...
-->creating daily time for yourself
-->completing at least 'something' every day
-->take responsibility for your time
p.302 Philippe Van Parijs says "we must learn to transform setbacks into opportunities".
p.325 Dora Gudrun Gudmundsdottir has coined "10 Commandments of Mental Health"
1. think positively
2. cherish the ones you love
3. continue learning as long as you live
4. learn from your mistakes
5. exercise daily
6. do not complicate your life unnecessarily
7. try to understand and encourage those around you
8. do not give up; success in life is a marathon, not a sprint
9. discover and nurture your talents
10.set goals for yourself and pursue your dreams
The Keys:
* money predicts only 4% of happiness
* it is not the 'easy' life that makes us happy. It is our attitude towards adversities and how we cope with them that matters most.
* find easy methods to bring wisdom into our lives. Refrigerator magnets anyone?
WHEW!!!!!