Flourish: A New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being - and How To Achieve Them [Paperback]

[Later note: "The Longevity Project" by Friedman and Martin is a groundbreaking overview of an 80-year study about what is really directly linked to happiness and health. Don't miss!]

Seligman was the first to move psychology from focusing exhaustively on what's wrong to looking at what's right. And that changed everything.

That change of focus may seem obvious now but it was actually a stroke of genius because it's hard - almost impossible - to create good from bad. Could anyone learn to play a musical instrument well from bad musicians, for example? However, given psychology's obsession up until then on what was wrong, Seligman's amazing accomplishment - creating an important branch that studies what is right - is akin to an instant U-turn by Allure of the Seas, currently the world's largest cruise ship (the size of a city block 16 floors high).

"Flourish" is not a repeat of his previous books as some appear to claim. Actually it represents Seligman's rejection of happiness as THE measurement of what's right. He explains this at length here but the essence seems to be that he has recognised the shallowness of measuring happiness, especially since it is so subjective but also because mood plays such a large part in happiness. He now argues that well-being is far more important.

Why only three stars? I felt there was really only a booklet worth of value in this book which, like so many written by academics (whose jobs can require them to "publish or die"), has a lot of "filler" (which can be entertaining if in the right mood for it). I scanned through this book to get the bones, the few gems of wisdom, which can probably be summarised by his definition, in an early chapter, of the five elements of well-being which are:

1. positive emotion (the pleasant life - subjective and coincidentally also important for happiness),
2. engagement (also subjective, and perhaps best explained by what Cziksentmihalyi calls Flow),
3. meaning (oddly, Seligman did not address purpose, which seems related),
4. positive relationships (other people), and
5. accomplishment (both accomplishment in its momentary form, and the "achieving life," a life dedicated to accomplishment for the sake of accomplishment, in its extended form).

There are a few practical activities recommended in this book, among them kindness (numerous small acts of giving, using your time to help others and not just giving away money) and the What-Went-Well Exercise (also called "Three Blessings"). (Doing three random acts of kindness daily (even the smallest, like smiling at someone) is guaranteed to make you more joyful within 3 weeks. How easy is that?!) For more on kindness, I recommend "Why Kindness Is Good for You" by David R. Hamilton (kindness is a way, not a thing).

Seligman explains the What-Went-Well Exercise by first acknowledging that sometimes it makes sense to analyse bad events so that we can learn from them and avoid them in the future. However, he says, people tend to spend more time thinking about what is bad in life than is helpful. Worse, this focus on negative events sets us up for anxiety and depression. One way to keep this from happening is to get better at thinking about and savouring what went well.

The Three Blessings exercise goes like this: Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you have a physical record of what you wrote. The three things need not be earthshaking in importance ("My husband picked up my favorite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today"), but they can be important ("My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy"). Next to each positive event, answer the question "Why did this happen?" For example, if you wrote that your husband picked up ice cream, write "because my husband is really thoughtful sometimes" or whatever.

You don't have to read the book to see if you can benefit from this exercise. Try it for the next week. [see P.S. at end] Then choose to read this book, or not.

Thanks to Seligman, I've spent well over a decade exhaustively researching what's known about happiness. You might also want to take a look at my top four practical books on happiness:

1. "To Love is to be Happy With", a classic from the founder of the famous "Options Institute", where people can live the process explained in his book;
2. "Happy for No Reason" summarises the best of happiness research into easy-to-use steps, illustrated with inspiring stories of how very happy people have surmounted personal tragedies using these happiness processes and habits;
3. "The How of Happiness", an insider's distillation of happiness research, written by one of the most original and creative scientists within the field of happiness studies itself, sharing the secrets she has learned from rigorously conducted scientific studies; and
4. (for its detailed action steps that work well with "How")"Emotional Toolkit".

Apart from Seligman's new emphasis on well-being, nothing new (that is research-based) on happiness appears to have been published since these books although I can recommend McTaggart's "The Bond" emphasising the importance of relationships and "Positivity" by Fredrickson on the tipping point created by having 3 positive thoughts to every negative or neutral thought (each elaborates on different aspects already known and reported within the happiness field).

However, in the end, having worked on myself intensively by using many of the tips, techniques and tools that I have learned about over the last 15 years, I found that HEALTH is the biggest determinant of happiness. To me, happiness is directly linked to well-being - in the sense of being well. Yes, there are happy sick people but for most of us it is our basic constitution that controls our level of happiness. This is not exactly the same as the now-famous "happiness set point" because there are ways to improve basic health whereas it seems the set point is, well, set.

P.S. I hesitated about whether to add this but finally decided it would be the ethical choice: having tried the Three Blessings exercise for a week, I found myself increasingly upset about the minimal nature of the blessings I was able to scrape up. They were either of the petty/pitiful "spouse brought ice cream home" nature or something nice that had happened to a friend or relative. All this did for me - every day! - was highlight how pathetic was my life, or the exercise, it did not much matter to me, I found. As Ehrenreich comments in "Smile or Die", her diatribe against positive thinking/illusions (essentially self-hypnosis): By and large, most of us seem to have accepted positive thinking as a substitute for our former affluence and security. Yet it seems this infatuation has not made us happier.

Positive psychology has come to be defined as "the scientific study of what enables individuals and communities to thrive". "Flourish" explores this concept of thriving. The last 15 years, Martin Seligman has been one of the major driving forces behind positive psychology. He has authored influential bestsellers such as Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life (1991) and Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realise Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment (2002). Now, again about a decade later, Seligman writes a new account of what he has been teaching and telling on conferences lately. He does so in a somewhat peculiar mix: a) a manifesto for a broad science of well-being, b) accounts of positive psychology research and practice, interlaced with c) a backstage history of positive psychology.

a) First of all, "Flourish" is a manifesto for a science of well-being. Seligman departs from his earlier "Authentic Happiness" concept and posits the broader topic of "well-being". "Authentic happiness" comprised three components: 1. positive emotion (feeling good), 2. engagement (flow) and 3. meaning. Seligman now adds two more components of well-being: 4. positive relationships and 5. accomplishment. To my humble opinion, the addition of 4. positive relationships is long overdue, whereas the addition of 5. accomplishment may turn out to be controversial.

b) Next, this book gives several examples of well-being research. Don't expect yet another pop self-help peptalk of "happiness in 5 easy steps". In a sound academic style, Seligman describes research on positive psychology exercises, post-traumatic growth, links between psychological well-being and health, and promising future research on well-being. Seligman also offers the reader a short peek into existing well-being (teaching) programs such as positive psychotherapy, MAPP (training Masters in Positive Psychology), Penn Resiliency Program (in schools), Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (in the U.S. Army), ...

c) Last (but not least), Seligman describes the history of Positive Psychology, the backstage academic and political bickering, the impact on science, media and politics. Seligman does not eschew stressing his own importance in this, balancing it with a self-depreciating humor (although it remains doubtful whether all readers really want to know about his diarrhea ensuing his watermelon diet).

These three thematic threads are intertwined in this book totaling 349 pages (First U.S. hardcover edition April 2011). Don't be misguided by the lack of notes in the main text: in the back, this book does contain 49 pages of extensive, page-per page notes where you can check many of the quoted scientific studies. A topic and name index of 28 pages is also included.

The book is definitely a U.S. product and may not always resonate with people from non-Anglo-Saxon cultures. This may be one of the major challenges in reaching the commendable and ambitious mission articulated at the end of this book: "By the year 2051, 51 percent of the people of the world will be flourishing."

I found "Flourish" a fascinating read that has held me captivated for three days straight.

'This book will help you flourish' the dust jacket claims in big letters on the back. Actually it won't. 'A new understanding of happiness and well-being and how to achieve them'. No it isn't. Don't judge a book by its cover the saying says: it's a good read, although Seligman does tend to wander off topic a bit, for example when he goes on about Lisa's dancing or explains why Ehrenreich is wrong. An editor would have been good.
But how does knowing the US army has a resilience programme and big database of its test results help me flourish? How does a Seligman-centric history of well-being research help me flourish? I bought the book to learn well-being ideas and techniques - what works and what does not, and there's very little of these.
But it's a good read, and Seligman has many interesting ideas in his field - such as what is our legacy to the world going to be now wealthy countries have wealth enough to go round - can we copy Florence and leave something (well-being, rather than beauty) that will last for future generations?
I hope Seligman will ensure future editions have an honest dust jacket and preface that describe what the book is actually about, rather than what the publisher thinks will sell it. But don't buy it for the cover!