Quickly, here’s want a combination of studies, psychological theories and interventions might suggest to you about how to be happy:
- Realize a sense universal well-being.
- Focus on improving, not just getting to zero.
- Increase or better your positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and/or achievements in life.
- Repeat the above in the present moments that make up everyday.
Now for a little explanation to flesh out the details.
Can you remember a time, any time, when you were a child and were just happy? No requirements, no artificial stimulation from situation or technology, just happy? Happy to feel the sun on your face? Happy to smell the air after the rain? What was that like?
Happiness means many different things to all the different kinds of people that live in the world today. Today, with advances in neuroscience and psychology, humans know more mentally about happiness than every before yet people report being less happy today than in generations prior.
1. Realize a sense of universal well-being.
Some obvious questions now might be what is a sense of universal well-being, how do I increase the sense of well-being and why should I bother?
Well, happiness is, of course, a subjective term. It is based in a human opinion about human feelings at any given moment. This varies from week to week or day to day. For some people, it changes hour by hour depending on what the latest crisis to which a person has chosen to react. Inherently then, happiness is not an objective experience and is not easily measurable.
What is measurable are the what we might call “constituent parts”, in the land of the human made up words, that people report as the answer when they say they are happy and someone asks them, “Why?”
Probably one of the most recently and widely recognized studies is in the U.K. regarding one of those parts, well-being, done by the Office of National Statistics in their efforts to measure National Well-being. More on that in a bit.
What is a sense of universal well-being?
In my own experience in dealing with students, mental health clients and, most importantly, my own self, the sense of universal well-being is what it has always been. A sense that all is right with the universe: the stars still twinkle, the birds are singing, the rains come and go, the tide ebbs and flow. This is a sense of contentment with life, health, relative comfort levels and so on, that is the under current of a person’s life when they realize that all is well. There may be momentary issues that arise but those are temporary and life goes on. It may sound cliche, but for many people, cultivating this sense of well-being in all areas of life works to improve their good feelings about life. And no matter how often the message is presented to try to get us to believe that the whole world is going to the dogs, life still goes on, sometimes in spite of what others choose to believe.
In appears that there is a relationship between this sense of well-being and how a person is living their life at particular stages. In their article about when personal well-being is highest, the Office of National Standards in the U. K. reported the following:
- Ages 16-19 and 65-79 tended to report the highest levels of well-being
- Ages 45-59 reported the lowest life satisfaction and happiness
- Ages 90 and over reported higher life satisfaction and happiness that those in middle age.
And, obviously:
- Anxiety levels reportedly increased in middle age peaking between 45 to 59 and falling after 65.
Average personal well-being ratings, 2012-2015:
U.K. Office of National Statistics Study of 300,000 individuals over 3 years.
Of course, in the middle years there is the striving for success, job promotion, paying for a home, car and whatever else comes long. Children also come to mind. They must be provided for during those years as well. It is possible any or all of these factors could impact the personal well-being reported by those in middle age.
How do we increase a sense of well-being?
I am not guaranteeing this will work for everyone but, for my life, my sense of well-being started with the first word “well”. When the things that happen in life would happen, I would make an effort to say out of my mouth so my own ears could hear, “All is well” or “I am well”. This was not to deny the challenges that occur in life but to reframe the situation and place the troublesome moments into a better perspective. “All is well” may not mean that “all is well right now while I have a flat tire and will miss my job interview” but it can me “all is well with my physical body, the air I breath” and so on. Some people only need to take a conscious breath and feel the wonder of what is happening inside their lungs as they breath in to regain that sense of well-being, of content. It’s a simple thing to do but it takes practice with the chemical response we call “emotion” attempts to hijack the present moment and lead us to believe we have problems, enemies and troubles everywhere. That, of course, is just not the case. Mindful breathing, meditation, reframing with thoughts or words, gentle music and any number of other possible options exist to help increase a sense of well-being in each moment of each day.
Why should I bother with cultivating a sense of well-being?
Many interventions in counseling and/or behavioral training focus on building up a notion that certain so-called “bad things” in life happen but they are temporary. Acceptance of those things and knowing they will pass is a better path than attempting to argue with the present moment and cause ourselves more stress and negative emotions than is ever needed. Knowing “all is well” in the overall scheme of things is more useful and help. Individuals who use the positive practice of thinking of 3 good things that happened before they go to sleep at night report a shift to more positive emotions 6 months later than without the practice. The phrases I used with clients in the past was “Life is for you, not against you. That’s why you can still breath without your permission no matter how hard you try not to.” Having a sense of well-being and accepting that it exists everywhere universally is simply a better way to treat ourselves and life in whatever form it takes at any given moment.
2. Focus on improving, not just get to zero.
One of the fathers of modern positive psychology, Martin Seligman, talks about how the psychoanalysts of the previous generations have taught us that the best we can do is get back to zero. Freud and others worked of the misery model and made their interventions work towards reducing misery. Seligman also states that modern marriage counseling attempts to make the two people less miserable in their marriage. Seligman, however, disagrees with what decades of psychology and, by extension, psychiatry has been based on. The positive psychology model focuses less on the need to deal with past hurts and misery and more on defining current strengths and approaching life by attempting to utilize those as much as possible. Basically, the positive psychology model focuses on the strengths we have now and how to use them instead of focusing on sexual deviancy and the tortuous childhood that constantly has to be dug up and rehashed in other models. Seligman’s research indicates in some instances that people who spend years dealing with past hurts are not currently any happier than people that start where they are and move forward. Seligman calls this not just trying to get to zero, like the psychoanalysts would have us do, but getting to +1, +2 and so on. Once you begin to study, you find out that people who constantly deal with these past issues in the zero sum game of psychotherapy as usual are never happier than those that focus on their strengths and move forward utilizing those strengths as often as possible. Makes sense when considered correctly.
Living life through what have been identified as “signature strengths” becomes an effective tool for progress and increases things like positive emotions. This can lead to an increased since of well-being. This, of course, over time leads people to feel happier with their lives.
3. Increase or better your positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning and/or achievements in life.
Martin Seligman suggested in 2011 that PERMA was what actually makes up well-being. Originally working off of the idea of authentic happiness, Seligman and his colleagues begin studying what people were reporting as happiness, which later evolved into the concept of well-being. Studies through survey data grew and interesting relationships emerged between the 5 aspects of PERMA and things such as health, job satisfaction and so on. These 5 areas were identified as the measurable aspects of well-being OR what people could report as ways or means to be happy.
The first area of PERMA is what is known as positive emotions. Examples of positive emotions include things like joy, love, contentment, interest, empathy and many more. It has been shown that a measure of what theorists call “objective happiness” can happen when we track an individual’s experience of good feelings or bad feelings in moments of life. Studies have shown that not only do positive emotions contribute to the reporting of more numerous instances of good feelings, positive emotions also contribute to the overall reporting of a sense of well-being overtime. So positive emotions have a temporary effect in the moment and a long-term effect over the course of months and or years as an individual begins to focus on increasing those moments of joy, love and similar positive emotions. Seligman states that this is not the same as behavior modification in psychotherapy because it is basically self-replicating-it feels good to feel happy so people naturally want to continue to do the things that make them feel happy. Increasing positive emotions in daily life can be a means of achieving emotional growth over time and an increase in a sense of well-being.
The next part of PERMA is the “E” which it stands for engagement. In the technical jargon of psychology this has been called eudaimonia flow or the Flow State. Seligman himself terms this as being “one with the music”. This describes a state of interacting with others or being involved in an activity where the individual seems to disappear temporarily. People engaged in the Flow State have reported a heightened sense of focus on the activity, a disappearance of certain focus on the issue of time, a heightened awareness of the spacial environment and a loosing of oneself while engaged in the activity.
In other words, people that enter a deep state of flow have reported in numerous instances that they are intensely focused on the activity and its details and have little ability to recognize what else is going on around them. In addition, individuals in flow have also reported that time seems to stop or “stand still” and that many hours can pass and it seems only like moments to the person. In studies of professional basketball players, there appears to be a heightened sense of where all the players on the basketball court are at a given moment without the individual controlling the ball looking up to see where those other players are before passing the ball to one of them. The “no look pass” is famous in the basketball world and may actually be the result of an altered state of perception when players are in flow as a group. These are just a few examples that will help you think of times in your own life when you have entered flow and experience one or more sensations similar to those described above. Increasing this type of engagement in life has resulted in people reporting that they were more interested and/or excited at work and at play. Increasing engagement can lead to an overall sense of more well-being just as positive emotion can.
Third is relationships. This part of the PERMA model applies to people who find an increase in well-being and, thereby, an increase in happiness, by participating in and building positive relationships. Many people report that they are happier, find more meaning in life or are generally more satisfied with life when they have pleasant relationships. These relationships included family, friends, co-workers and other people in thier lives that they regularly see.
At this point it is worth noting that not every person requires these positive relationships to be happier in life or at least not more than more one relationship. It is a popular myth in modern society that every person is or has to be connected to every other person. This is absolutely not true for highly introverted people. Introverts discover at some point in their lives that being around people for large stretches of time or being around large numbers of people at the same time drains their energy. These introverts then need time alone to recharge and get back to a good feeling state. This is not wrong at all. For introverts, the feeling of content from quiet time spent in reflection is much more valuable that talking with a group of people that seems to suck the life out of them. Highly introverted individuals are not afraid to be alone and can having a meaningful relationship with themselves.
All that above said, a majority of people do gain some positive increase in good feelings by being other people and engaging in relationships that seem to increase good feelings. In addition, just like their are introverts that do not enjoy the company of others, their are extroverts that do not feel they are functioning well at all without the interaction of other people. Extroverts almost seem to require an audience of people to interact with or preform for to really enjoy their daily lives. Extroverts can tend to gain more energy from groups than feel drained by them. Again, this is not wrong, it’s just the way extroverts tend to function.
For most people, having good, solid relationships contributes to the overall sense of well-being. Even introverts will typically report having at least one good friend that they enjoy spending time around. Working to build upon positive relationships can increase PERMA in our lives.
The next part of the PERMA acronym is the “M” which stands for meaning. People sometimes talk about having a purpose in life, finding meaning in life or some mission/vision/passion. This is the area of PERMA that contributes to an increase in well-being by giving the individual a sense of being here for a reason or purpose.
A sense of meaning in life usually comes from a person reaching a point where they ask the ever-present, human question, “why am I here?” In modern society, at least in the west, much of the meaning in life is gained from the different types of involvement with community or society. This can be owning a business that makes a difference in the world, participating in church or other community organizations, volunteering in some capacity with an organization that serves a particular group, or participating in some type of team or group project. These are just a few examples of ways people have found meaning or purpose in life. Generally, the extent of the meaning is related to how big the project is or how large its impact. People seek meaning and purpose in things that are allowing the person to participate in something bigger than themselves. The perception of something being bigger than self increases the amount of meaning or purpose that a person’s life seems to have. There are many people that have great missions, visions and purposes in life that they have completely devoted themselves to and report that they are happier since doing that. This, like all of the PERMA aspects discussed so far, does not necessarily apply to every person. Again, if you are more introverted, it is quite possible that you will steer clear of seeking to join some group project in order to find meaning in life. Most likely the introvert will find plenty of meaning in life by simply thinking about life and focusing on their own reflections for particular things in life. However, there are plenty of other people who find great meaning and great purpose in life by joining some social organization, by volunteering at the church, or by volunteering for other programs that help others and seem to be striving to attain a goal that is much bigger than the individuals themselves. Seeking meaning or purpose in life that is greater than oneself can increase an overall sense of well-being and can therefore lead to an increase in the sense of happiness.
The last part of PERMA is the “A” which stands for achievement. Achievement in the original model of PERMA was sometimes called accomplishment. Often these terms are interchangeable. But as Martin Seligman talked with some of his colleagues, he came to understand that there are certain individuals that exist simply to achieve things. People who like to achieve certain accomplishments in life excel and have a greater sense of well-being and/or happiness when they are achieving things or have achieved things. As with the extroverts enjoying being around other people, high achievers enjoy achieving just for the activity’s sake. The achievement at the end of these activities is more meaningful than other goals in life. This increases the person’s sense of well-being in life simply because they have achieved whatever it is they set out to achieve. Again, these are typically the people that have a core belief that they can accomplish anything that they set out to do in life and use achievement to prove it regularly.
To briefly review, PERMA, stands for positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and achievement. Increasing all or any one of these in our lives can lead to a heightened sense of well-being. These five are measurable and can point towards what some people call “happiness” being increased in our lives. So working on increasing PERMA increases a sense of well-being and, over time, people who increase a sense of well-being report that they feel happier.
4. Repeat the above in the present moments that make up everyday.
It is easy to say “choose to be happy”. It is another thing entirely to keep making it through every single day for the rest of your life staying true to that choice. The change really started to sink in to my life when I began to realize that I did not need anger anymore. I still have my days, just like anyone else, but these days are better than ever. Life situations have come my way lately that would have easily frustrated a younger, less mature me. But through practicing things I have learned working in the mental health field, I have become better at not letting these things get to me. If there is one simple way to start being happier in life, I would say that the place to start is being grateful. Gratitude for the good things or the things that we already choose to be happy about tends to increase a sense of life satisfaction that can be interpreted as happiness. Starting tonight before you go to sleep, think of 3 things that were good or happy about or in this day that is ending. Maybe it’s that you got that big promotion you were hoping for. Or maybe you made to the bathroom without having an accident after eating too much spicy food last night. Whatever it is, end each day for the next 30 days with the The Good 3. None of those have to be Earth shattering occurrences, but they could be. In Seligman’s studies, individuals who did this reported an increase in positive feelings about their lives after 6 months. Take the first step towards happiness with this simple exercise and see where it takes you. I hope you have learned at least one thing useful from this article. If so, it was worth all the words you have read or listened to.
Good luck. I’m hopeful for you. We’re all in this together. Sort of.
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