Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment,   ISBN:9780743222983

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Written by the former president of the American Psychological Association, and author of over a dozen books including the popular Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life, this title is one of the better selling happiness books out there.

While this is the kind of book I could write a really long review about, I think I'll just discuss what I consider to be the best bits for those looking for ways to become happier- which I think is why most people would buy this book. Soooo.....

1) the book provides the reader with a "happiness formula", which is H = S + C + V. This works out to happiness = your genetic Set point + intervening Circumstances + factors under you Voluntary control. So, since your can't do much about changing your genetics, when it comes to becoming happier, that leaves room for improvement in the areas of circumstances and voluntary activities.

2) the book suggests that if you want to lastingly raise your level of happiness by changing the external circumstances of your life, you should: live in a wealthy democracy, get married, avoid negative events and negative emotion, acquire a rich social network, and get religion. Conversely, you needn't bother to do the following: make more money, stay healthy, get as much education as possible, or try to change your race or move to a sunnier climate. However even if you could alter all of these things, it would not do much for you as this stuff accounts for only a small part of your happiness. On to Voluntary efforts...

3) This is where most of the book spends a substantial part of its efforts showing you how to be happier, and there's a lot of "meat" to sink your teeth into, with sections on how to obtain more satisfaction with your past, what consitutes happiness about the future, and happiness in the present. Also, the book spend much time talking about how happiness can be cultivated by identifying and nurturing our traits, such as humor, optimism, generosity or kindness.

Readers who have read other happiness books will already be well familiar with the idea that the best way to increase your happiness is through intentional or voluntary activities. It makes a lot of sense, as you can't change your genetics, and circumstances are either out of your control, or make very little contributions to your happiness. Like this book, I agree that using intentional activities is the route to go when it comes to raising lasting happiness levels- and this book will help you out with that a lot. Other evidence-based books readers might be interested in that can also increase your well-being include Exercise Beats Depression.

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I really wanted to like this book. But alas I was disappointed.

The author opens the book with lots of talk about 'flow' and 'strengths', novel ideas that he claims are all-important and that I wanted to hear lots about. Unfortunately he starts on them late, doesn't even get that deep on them, and leave most of the book to material already visited in his earlier works and stuff that doesn't have as much impact.

Also, this may bother some people (as it did me): This authors favorite words are: I, me, myself, my. He comes across as very self-important and self-congratulatory. He will bore you to tears at points with his anecdotes of his dealings with Ivy league professors, his accolades, etc. It's not that I am somehow jealous -- I am doing very well in my life in these regards personally -- it just that this guy has no modesty, yet he preaches about practicing virtues.

Overall, weak book from someone who could have done more (he has indeed made many venerable contributions to psychology). Could have been so much more. And my lord, if I ever hear him talk about how great he is again I will have to stick my head in a toilet.

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First of all any standpoint claiming to bring happiness to all in a formula should be treated with aggresive skepticism. I'm not sure what Seligman's intentions were in writing this book. Was it to make us happier, make us better people?, or to make us happier while being better people, or to make a quick buck...My guess would be E. a nasty combination of all of the above. First of all it is implied that it is supposed to make us happier, but authentically, and then it proposes to exercise strengths that reflect "universal virtues" , in our daily lives, all in the service of becoming happy. This psychologist probably doesn't have much faith in the morality of human beings. People can no longer be good for the sake of it, but maybe just maybe, they will do it for their own happiness. Sorry Seligman you're probably a pro pure empiricist, for this doesn't make any sense. The aim of your book is quite paradoxical if you look with some scrutiny. You encourage people to be "virtuous" in order to be happy. If one applies the book like this it will never work. Maybe he hasn't heard of Herbet Spencer, who has said emotions cannot become an object in themselves. He claimed that trying to do something for the sake of happiness is emotional suicide. This is clear if one thinks about it, trying to do a kind deed for the sake of happiness removes the focus from the kindness to the happiness, and is ultimately selfish, and therefore ironically far from virtuous, and one is probably left with an inauthentic feeling of nothingness, only to wonder why science lies. The view is narrow minded and superficial and doesn't take into account the person doing the deeds, and the intentions they are doing it with. Does Seligman have the slightest clue of the relation between values and emotion? Does he really expect to present us with some values, ask us to follow them, and then be happier. Foolishness, these aren't true values, and will not produce true happiness. He mentions in the chapter on meaning, on "attaching to something larger than oneself" but this has no reference to the virtues. I'm also quite skeptical about the whole happiness set point, and Seligman with his proud pessimissm trying to set limits on the human capacity to change, the only way is to try for yourself. Signature strenghts is a kinda good idea, that's the only praise I have. You wanna quick summary of this book, if you wanna be happy get married, spend time with your spouse, find out your strengths and exercise them daily, and become a better person. If one does all this in the hope of being happy, then we see ultimately this book encourages selfishness, emotional narcissism, and ironically emotional suicide. Odd for a psychologist who claims that the cause of depression in modern times is the focus on ourselves, and "getting in touch with our feelings." Wouldn't buy this book, I just gave you a summary, there's not much more... the ideas aren't worth it, I'd try some Ken Wilber if I were you, pretty interesting stuff.

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I really enjoyed "Learned Optimism" by the same author. It opened a world for me of how rumination can lead to depressing thoughts and how cognitive therapy can be used to change those thought patterns. Unfortunately I did not enjoy "Authentic Happiness". "Authentic Happiness" did not have the same purposeful focus as "Learned Optimism." I applaud Seligman's position on the needed direction of psychology. Psychology has been used to treat the mentally ill. This helps a small percentage of the population. Seligman argues psychology should be used to help mentally healthy people become happier. This will help many more people.

When I read the survey used to measure happiness on page 15, I started to question Seligman's scientific authority. This survey is basically a scale from 0 to 10 that you rate yourself on how happy or unhappy you usually feel. Then you provide the percentage of time you feel happy, unhappy, or neutral. That is it! This is about as scientific a way to measure happiness as you would get from a fashion magazine. If this is the best tool Seligman has to measure happiness, you have to question his conclusions about how to achieve happiness.

The second part of "Authentic Happiness" is about strength and virtue. Seligman argues that when you use your strengths to do virtuous acts, you will be on the road to authentic happiness. Sounds good, but once again, the survey provided to discover your signature strengths is pretty lame. Twenty-four strengths are identified (which are things like curiosity, valor and bravery, etc.) and then you rate yourself if the strength on a scale of 1 to 5 is "very much like me" or "very much unlike me." This seriously has very little depth.

The third part of the book is more a philosophical discussion about happiness in different aspects of life. It is more the author's subjective opinions.

All in all, "Authentic Happiness" does not really help you get closer to authentic happiness. It does not give you clear steps of how to change yourself to routinely exercise your signature strengths. And how you end up identifying your signature strengths is not all that enlightening.

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Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment Happiness is the big new buzz word, but this is the original handbook. Martin Seilgman is the leader of the powerful movement of Positive Psychology and this book really is required reading on the subject of happiness.