Martin Seligman is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. He’s the Director of the Positive Psychology Center there, the director of the Penn Master of Applied Positive Psychology program, the former president of the American Psychological Association, the author of numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, and something like nine books.
Seligman’s a leader in the emerging Positive Psychology sub-discipline in Psychology. He’s developed a framework for understanding psychological well-being, or happiness, specifically five elements that work together to produce and maintain optimal mental, emotional, and spiritual functioning. His system is called PERMA. The elements are: Positive emotion; Engagement; Relationships; Meaning; and Accomplishment.
According to the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center these five PERMA components are positively associated with physical health, job satisfaction, and commitment within organizations. It’s not only the individual who benefits from increasing happiness, but also organizations, and society as a whole. You might want to think about what you can do to enhance your life in each of these areas and how you can encourage others in your circle of influence to do the same.
Positive Emotion.
This is pretty simple. If you want to flourish in life, if you want a happy life, you’re certainly thinking about the role your emotions. Happiness is more than positive emotions, but it includes positive emotions.
Examples of positive emotions are: joy, gratitude, optimism, hope, and compassion. There are many others, but these are some of the big ones. Within certain limits, you can increase positive emotions, about the past: practice gratitude and forgiveness; about the present: savoring pleasure and mindfulness; about the future: by building hope and optimism.
Engagement.
Engagement is an expansion on Mihalyi Csikszentmihlyi’s concept of “flow.” You enter a flow mentality when your talents, strengths, and skills are engaged in challenging activities that keep your attention. The challenge holds attention so well that people who experience flow often report they’ve lost track of time, or that time has flown by during their flow experience. The challenge can’t be so difficult that you constantly fail, but it mustn’t be easy either, because that won’t hold your attention. Engagement, or flow, occurs when your energy and attention is focussed on the activity at hand. When you’re finished with flow, you may even say, “I was in the flow!”
Flow activities can include athletics, reading, solving problems, working puzzles, engaging conversation, playing video games, even watching television or films (You’ll need to be careful of screen time because too much of a “good” thing can become detrimental). Whatever engages your mind and challenges your skills can contribute to “being in the zone” and experiencing flow. People who regularly use their strengths and engage in flow increase their happiness, or psychological well-being.
Relationships.
Healthy, positive relationships are important if you want to be happy. Humans are fundamentally social creatures. We were made for relationships. A whole range of relationships contribute to emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being, including relationships with spouse, children, friends, co-workers, neighbors, fellow church members, etc. It’s not necessarily a “more is better” equation, as it’s the quality of close relationships that are most impactful. If you want to be healthy and happy, a few close, good, mutually beneficial relationships are key.
Meaning.
Seligman defines meaning as belonging to and serving something bigger than the self. I don’t know if he would make the connection, but it’s similar to Maslow’s model of self-transcendence. To build meaning, you must shift the focus from you and your personal well-being onto the well-being of others. Meaning requires you to contribute to some cause, some purpose higher than simply satisfying your own needs and desires. There’s a bit of an irony here, because as you serve this higher purpose and build higher meaning in life, it does make your life better, a lot better. This is a major blindspot for our society, today, where people remain caught in a negative cycle of self-absorption. Contributing time and energy to religion, science, politics, work, social causes, etc. are among some of the ways you create meaning and enhance your sense of well-being.
Accomplishment.
Seligman’s final characteristic is accomplishment, achievement, competence, success, mastery for it’s own sake. As you work toward and reach goals, you gain a sense of achievement. Graduating from high school, from college are examples of accomplishment. Even smaller goals that make up big goals are also important and impactful. Pursuing goals and achievement with perseverance pays off in well-being, even simply accomplishment for accomplishment’s sake. Sports, hobbies, games can all offer goals to achieve.
Intrinsic goals, goals that are internally motivating offer a bigger payoff than extrinsic goals, goals that offer some external reward. Goals like personal growth and connection lead to a larger gain in happiness than money or fame.
In his book, Flourishing, Seligman reminds us of Eric LiddelL, the real-life inspiration for the film, Chariots of Fire. He was an Olympic runner who said, “God made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.” Liddel was successful. He achieved many of his goals, but the simple act of running well brought him a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
That’s PERMA. It’s a rather helpful tool in pursuing a happy, fulfilling, meaningful, flourishing life. Seligman and others have modified the theory> He now talks about PERMA+ where the “plus” stands for Optimism, Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Sleep. Pursuing health in these areas contributes to happiness. I’ll delve into this expanded theory in a future post.
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YouTube Version Here: https://youtu.be/t6oV44sY4-A
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