Purposeful Growth

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Angela Cockayne, Flikr CC

I appreciate someone who is willing to admit an error. This is especially impressive to me when the someone is a notable person with a public reputation to protect and live up to.

Recently, a top scientist, Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of the positive psychology movement, former president of the American Psychological Association, and author of many groundbreaking books, admitted in his latest book, Flourish (Free Press, 2001), that his earlier theories on human well-being were useful beginnings, but incomplete.

In Authentic Happiness (Free Press, 2002), a book that I still recommend, Seligman set the course for positive psychology researchers to identify the causes of happiness, believing as Aristotle did hundreds of years ago, that “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

With Seligman’s leadership and emphasis on understanding the fundamentals of happiness, much very useful information became available to all of us, helping us understand the degree to which we could influence and achieve happier lives. The How of Happiness (Penguin Books, 2007, Lyubomirsky) is probably the best example of a comprehensive, yet easily understandable tome on how to be happier. The How of Happiness is summarized on my Best Books page.

My own The Happiness Workbook: Take Control of Your Happiness provides you with a brief self-assessment and proven exercises to help you take control and improve your state of happiness. Five-star rated, The Happiness Workbook is available in all popular e Reader formats.

Is Well-being more than Happiness?

As research into happiness ensued, some researchers questioned Seligman’s hypothesis, questioning whether happiness sufficiently included the ingredients necessary for greatest human well-being. Seligman accepted the questions raised by other scientists and, through further research studies, has now expanded his theory and challenge to positive psychology researchers to include a broader definition of human well-being, based on the concept of flourishing.

Flourish means to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way, especially as the result of a particularly congenial environment (Dictionary.com). Seligman challenged positive psychology researchers to understand the components of the particularly congenial environment that would allow each of us to flourish in our own lives.

Flourish with these Five Ingredients

Seligman describes five components or ingredients of a person’s environment that support flourishing. One does not need all five to flourish, although I suppose that would be ideal.

The five components of human well-being making up the acronym PERMA, are:

• Positive Emotion: This is what most of us think of as happiness, feeling good.

• Engagement: This is being totally absorbed in an activity, what some call Flow. When fully engaged a person loses track of time, is completely focused on the tasks at hand, and is often unaware of external events. When fully engaged (flow or in the zone), a person is highly energized, and may forget to eat and sleep, so absorbed in an activity that hunger and fatigue are subdued.

• Relationships: There is clear evidence that strong relationships contribute to well-being. People with strong relationships are happier, healthier, and more resilient to life’s normal difficult events.

• Meaning and Purpose: People have an inherent drive to believe in and contribute to something bigger than themselves. Living with purpose has been correlated with longevity in the so-called blue zone studies.

• Accomplishment: Achieving one’s goals is satisfying. Whether checking off the tasks of today’s to-do list, or completing a goal requiring months or years of effort, achieving contributes to a sense of well-being.

Though one might take the position that PERMA is just a more detailed definition of happiness, it’s clear to me that Seligman’s concept of focusing on flourishing through the components of PERMA, can become a good guideline for personal growth.

In the coming weeks I’ll be re-visiting my popular Sample Personal Development Plan, updating it to include PERMA concepts.