image by ♥Phoebe Finds Beauty

I spent yesterday afternoon watching a bunch of TED talks and knitting a pair of fingerless gloves. Knitting and listening is a good combination, I find—the knitting occupies my hands and the chatty part of my mind so that the rest of me can relax and listen. I watched a bunch of talks, and they were all really great, but the one that stuck with me most was Martin Seligman’s talk on Positive Psychology.

Seligman’s mission is to expand psychology’s historical role—working with dysfunction, helping miserable people not feel so bad—into the positive realm. While treating the mentally ill is an important function, it’s not the only one. He says that psychology must also concern itself with helping normal people live even more fulfilling lives, to be happier.

Of course, it’s difficult to talk about making people happier without defining what happiness is. Seligman breaks it down into three components:

• First is pleasure, or positive emotional feelings.
• Second is flow, or consuming engagement with life.
• Third is meaning, or using one’s strengths in service to something greater than oneself.

The ability to experience pleasure is a beautiful thing, and can be cultivated to a certain extent. But Seligman’s research shows that that greatest gains can be developed in the second and third components of happiness: increasing the amount of time spent in the state of flow, and increasing the degree to which we use our strengths in service to something we believe in.

This makes sense to me. If we are firing on all cylinders in the service of something important, he says, then pleasant experiences on top of that are like the frosting on the cake. But when we are living without meaning or in a way that doesn’t make use of our strengths, then pleasure alone is not going to make us truly happy.

Of course, if there are fundamental problems in a person’s mental health, then that person is not going to be equipped to find much happiness until those problems are addressed. But, Seligman says, when psychology focuses exclusively on dysfunction and disease, it does humanity a disservice. We aren’t simply machines that sometimes break down—we are also capable of great beauty. By studying what contributes to our capacity to create, appreciate, and engage with beauty, psychologists can help each of us increase it.

Later in his talk, Seligman opens this concept up in broader terms, saying that we often have this same limitations in our thinking in all fields, specifically techology, entertainment, and design (this is the TED talk after all). When we go about our work, too often we think only about solving problems. He challenges us to also think about increasing happiness.

Thinking about this in terms of the mission of this site, my personal mission—taking responsibility for creating the future we want—I wonder, how does this change the game? Obviously we have lots of problems right now that urgently need to be addressed, but is solving problems going to get us where we want to go? How does the game change if we think of our task in terms of both solving problems AND creating a world that also provides more happiness to everyone? What if it’s about thriving as much as surviving? What does this do to our experience of life and our inspiration?

It seems to me that as we increase the net tonnage of human happiness—in pleasure, engagement, and service—we can’t help but solve the problems that threaten our civilization. Imagine millions of people fully participating with all their abilities within a large and meaningful context of service and gratitude. This is the world that I want to see—one where everyone’s gifts are used up every day, where no one is wasted in addiction or isolation or despair. No problem can be greater than the buzz of 6 billion people on fire.

On a personal level, the question becomes why do we resist creating this kind of happiness for ourselves, especially knowing that a better world is an inevitable by-product of this pursuit? I see it in my own life and in others as well—so often we choose to passively sit and consume rather than get up and engage. Why do we do this? Is it habit, nihilism, a feeling of being overwhelmed, a sense of entitlement?

Maybe it’s a bit of each of these. But Seligman’s analysis of happiness provides us with a powerful tool in our efforts to dismantle these destructive patterns of thought and behavior. When we know what generates happiness—full engagement in a broad and meaningful context—we can see our lazy habits for what they are: a cul-de-sac that goes round and round in small and boring circles. And then we can choose to break out, to find a context of service that makes sense to us, and to throw everything we have into what we’re doing. In this way, we can generate happiness, solve our problems, and create a magnificently elegant future all at once.

What do you think of Seligman’s breakdown of happiness? Does this perspective help you think of your life and contributions differently? Can we enjoy ourselves on a new level even while facing the greatest crises in human history?