Flourish, A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being, by Martin E. P. Seligman, is
about why some individuals flourish and what can be done to help
other flourish. To “flourish” would mean that an individual meets
a number of characteristics that are personal or present in their
lives which are positive and contribute towards a “good” life.
Seligman begins by explaining the development of the field of
positive psychology as well as offering the latest understanding of
the research and theory of what goes into an individual having a good
life. Seligman explains well-being theory and the five components of
it which contribute to well-being. The components are positive
emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and
accomplishment (PERMA). Positive emotion is fairly synonymous with
happiness and is similar to daily happiness or positive mood.
Engagement regards how often people participate in activities they
really enjoy and that they get completely absorbed in. Positive
relationships is self explanatory. Meaning relates to qualities of a
person's life that they do or have because they are important to them
(such as staying up late talking to my friend even though I'm tired
but I do it because he is upset and my relationship with him is
important to me). Accomplishment deals with a person completing goals
and making progress on things that are important to them such as
getting As in their classes or presenting in the student work
symposium. I wanted to briefly explain the five components because I
think the PERMA model is important and easily applicable. Therefore,
these five components contribute to an individual's overall
well-being (as well as a few other factors depending on how overall
well-being is being measured).
The book then goes on to explain some
positive psychology techniques to increase well-being as well as the
current focus of much of current psychology and how it focuses on the
negative or neutral and rarely the positive. Seligman then explains
how positive psychology can be taught and incorporated into education
and how it was and is being utilized by the army to help its
soldiers. Then, Seligman discusses how well-being contributes to
personal health and how a few other things contribute positively to
individuals (such as optimism). Lastly, Seligman focuses on the goals
of positive psychology and how people can be helped, especially
focusing on pushing nations and governments to increase well-being
for their citizens rather than focusing on economic (and material)
growth. In a nutshell I would say the book is about the
characteristics of people who are high in well-being and how one
would work towards a life high in well-being. This includes the
different parts of PERMA but also a few other things such as
exercise, optimism, and individuals utilizing their strengths.
Therefore, if you want to learn how to work towards greater
well-being in your own life, or want to help others work towards
well-being (including eventually working in this growing field) then
this book is definitely worth your time!
I chose this book because I took a
Positive Psychology course while studying abroad. Although the class
focused on many applications of theory in the field and we were able
to look into a number of different institutions and converse with
professionals whose work was relevant to the field, many fellow
students were skeptical about the validity of the techniques and the
findings presented in the course. I saw this assignment as an
excellent opportunity to explore much of the research and findings
that the field is based on. Although Seligman was discussed in the
course we never actually read any of his work. I thought this was a
good idea for me as I was able to get perspective on the leading
individual from the field as well as read about much of the research
and the ways it is being applied that was not encountered in my
earlier course. Furthermore, as someone who is interested in
potentially pursuing clinical psychology I like to get many different
perspectives on the different ways to help people and this is
definitely one of them.
I would recommend this book to anyone
who is interested in positive psychology especially those who have
not had much exposure to the field; it makes for a really good
introduction. The book is definitely readable by people who do not
have much experience with psychology (some of the methodology
information may be a little tedious to read about for those who have
been through research methods). The book is definitely a good read
for social psych students as it provides many applications and
explanations of relevant research that are relevant to concepts
learned in class and that aren’t simply repeats of material.
I would say my favorite part of the
book was the chapter on applying findings from the field to
techniques and practices any person can do to increase their
well-being (I will go into a couple later). Overall, I think the book
does a very good job incorporating research findings and
demonstrating how the research has been applied. Seligman did some
work with the military giving him a gigantic sample size and many
examples of his and other's work benefiting and helping individuals
in the army through their program. This gives a lot of credibility to
the field and book, and is therefore one of its biggest strengths. I
would say the biggest weakness is how the book changes focus so much.
Because it is basically an overview of the entire field it deals with
history, personal application, research, huge programs, and future
directions. It being not that long of a book and with the amount of
personal detail Seligman likes to give, it often touches on a lot of
things but fails to go super in depth. So again, it is a good
introductory book to the field with good review of much of the
research but possibly not for someone trying to critically examine
the research or the programs and their success.
Much of the information in this book is
very applicable to your everyday life and is one of its strongest
points. Other than the PERMA model, the strengths is one of the best
things to come out of the book because it really easy to apply (and
really helps some people out). Basically everyone has strengths and
Seligman makes the argument that regularly accessing your strengths
in whatever way possible would increase well being. If you want to
take the strengths test (be warned... it takes a good while!) then
follow this link
(
http://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/Default.aspx)!
As you can see there are a number of other questionnaires you can
fill out but the strengths test is in the list. The
signature
strengths test will rank your top 24 strengths based on 240
questions (10 per strength). I took the test and found that some of
my top strengths were gratitude and perspective. Seligman makes the
argument that accessing your strengths will make you happier and will
make you more productive because you are doing things in a way that
accesses what you are good at and what you enjoy. Based on my
strengths I have been trying to go on walks at least once a week with
a friend (perspective) and doing the
What-Went-Well exercise
which is also described in the book. The exercise is where you set
aside about 10 minutes or so everyday and reflect on 3 or more things
that went well that day (gratitude). So I might say, “Man! I'm sure
glad that social blog is submitted!” or, “Today, I had a lot of
fun in chemistry lab! And I didn't even set my lab partner on fire!”
Basically, the exercise, which is really easy, gets you to reflect on
the things that are good in your life and appreciate and recognize
the daily experiences that you enjoyed. Anyway, this exercise is how
I have tried to do more to access my strength of gratitude.
I like to think of signature strengths
as being similar to schematic traits.
As described by Hazel Markus (1977), the self concept is made up of
self-schemas, or
beliefs about the self. Furthermore, schematic traits are traits that
an individual strongly identifies with and that they care about a
lot, meaning they notice it in themselves and others (Markus, Hamill,
& Sentis, 1987).
Because these self-schemas represent what an individual thinks about
themselves, acting in ways and taking advantage of activities that
access their strengths, they are likely to be happier with their
life. Therefore, I see accessing my strengths as another meaningful
way of acting in ways that are consistent with my self-schemas which
leads to me being happy and enjoying activities. For example, I think
of myself as a thoughtful person, so a strength of perspective
encourages me to do activities that are reflective and thought
provoking (as I am currently doing with my walks as mentioned
earlier).
Another
quality (this is also a potential strength from the strength test) of
individuals with high well-being is grit.
Seligman discusses grit and how individuals with grit are more
self-disciplined and are more persistent and passionate towards
goals. Furthermore, Seligman explains how individuals high in self-discipline often achieve higher levels of
accomplishment. For example, Duckworth and Seligman (2005) found that
highly self-disciplined eighth graders exhibited a number of positive
characteristics such as earning higher grades, going to more selective high schools, and watching less TV.
Very relevant to grit is self-regulation.
Muraven and Baumeister (2000) propose that self-regulation is a
limited resource that can be used up or depleted and then replenished
with energy, much like a muscle. Therefore, if having high grit is a
natural extension of having high self-regulation abilities, it is
important to recognize an individual's self-regulation capabilities
as they are likely indicative of accomplishment. I received a poor
grit result from the strength test which is not surprising because I
consider my self-regulation abilities to be mediocre. As an example
of this, I tried learning an instrument recently but kept pushing
daily practice back everyday so that it was getting to the point
where I was never practicing! In this situation if I could use
self-regulation to get over my reservations and start practicing I
would eventually be able to play an instrument. Reasonably I was not
able to accomplish much regarding my instrumental abilities. I've
been working on my grit though! I've been trying to be more
persistent with my activities such as exercising which has resulted
in me accomplishing more in some areas.
Another
characteristic Seligman stresses the importance of is optimism.
Optimism, as we all know, refers to a positive outlook towards the
future and its potential outcomes. Seligman discusses how optimism is
important for well-being by giving people a positive outlook on the
future. It results in people feeling better and striving for better
outcomes rather than being passive and assuming the worst. I think
this is easily applicable to self-serving
cognitions which
are situations where people attribute success to themselves and where they push the blame for
failure on anything but a personal reason (Mezulis, Abramson, Hyde, &
Hankin, 2004; Schlenker, Weigold, & Hallam, 1990). Reasonably,
people interpret future events positively and these serve as
self-serving cognitions. For example, Weinstein (1980) found that
college students were optimistic about the future thinking that they
would be more likely to graduate highly in their class and get a
higher paying job following graduation as well as being less likely
to have negative events befall them. Optimism is a self-serving
cognition because it does not reflect reality (it is just assuming
positive things) but it makes us feel good by resulting in the idea
that good things are going to happen to us. Personally, as an example
of the opposite, pessimism, I can easily show how optimism is a good
thing. When I first entered college there was a girl who I liked but
I thought that she didn't like me and therefore thought it was not
worth pursuing her. It turns out she did like me (I found out much
later) but since I did not act on it I missed an opportunity. The
converse behavior and thought would have been, “I bet if I ask her
out it will go well, and then, even if it does not it will be fine
because I'll move on and get another girl later!” This line of
reasoning would have benefited me a lot more by resulting in no
missed opportunities and me feeling better. It is easy to see how in
this case pessimism created a negative outlook and an overall worse
result and how optimism would have really resulted in a better
outcome.
There are number of things you could
take away from this book such as your strengths or the what-went-well
exercise, but I would say if you were going to get one thing out of
the book it would be the PERMA model. It is a good foundation for
understanding many applications of findings in the field.
Additionally, this model is a very good starting point for anyone
trying to increase their life satisfaction or well-being by offering
a good lens with which to view the different components of an
individual's life as they contribute to that individual's overall
well-being. Therefore, anyone who wants to improve their life can use
this model as a tool to examine which parts of their life could
really use improvement to increase personal well-being. Furthermore,
it would be easy to help another person by going through the five
components with them. Therefore, its an applicable tool that is easy
to remember.
Martin E. P. Seligman is a professor of
psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. He was the president of
the American Psychological Association in 1998 and was instrumental
in establishing the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) in
2005 at the University of Pennsylvania, the first MAPP. He was also
one of the researchers who discovered and produced research on
learned helplessness. His work has been funded and supported by
numerous organizations including the National Institute of Mental
Health and the National Science Foundation. Seligman was also
instrumental through his position as president of the APA, his
research and implementation of programs at the University of
Pennsylvania, and through securing of funding in establishing the
field of positive psychology. In addition to his work on positive
psychology he has also done research and produced a few books on
topics such as depression and ethnopolitical conflict. All of these
topics are covered to some degree in this book (if you are interested
in MAPP, this is a good place to get some information about it). He
is also very good at bridge (as he likes to let the reader know).
This dude has a pretty impressive resume. Furthermore, his writing is
very readable and he makes the theories accessible and does a good
job countering some of the criticism that has come up against him and
the field at different points in his career. Overall, he is very
qualified to talk about research and the field having been involved
in a lot of it and otherwise being an experienced researcher. As
mentioned, the book features a fair amount of research and goes into
detail about how the field constructed and carried out its programs
(primarily with the military and the MAPP) showing it to absolutely
be scholarly.
(Word count: 2550)
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