Pieces of Happiness
(14 min read)

George Owen

Happiness is a universal and complex topic. This article considers the paths to happiness, or at least, the paths away from misery from the perspective of Positive psychology, which is based on the belief that people are entitled to lead lives informed by meaning, purpose, and connection.

People are entitled to lead fulfilling lives underscored by connection to their strengths and free from pathologies of the mind wherever possible. Positive psychology is not pretentious. It is focused on evidence-based conclusions around personal improvement and growth. Join me on this journey of both exploration and practice. I explore some of the research conducted by Martin Seligman's team and describe 'PERMA' while we're at it. The difference between pleasure and joy or happiness is touched on briefly and I explore the notion of learned helplessness and learned optimism.

Evolution of positive psychology

What is so positive about positive psychology? The study of misery in all its forms has been around for a long time. Seeking to help people achieve ordinary misery instead of hysteria was probably a good idea in Sigmund Freud's time. Seeking to help people move from mental illness to experience happy and fulfilled lives seems much better¹. At least the target seems more positive!

Moving from a medical model seemed like a good idea. The medical model sought to treat symptoms and signs. Signs are what the doctor can see clearly and treat according to their training and experience. Symptoms are what the patient describes. They're sad, depressed, and even suicidal. Physical evidence is not so readily observable, and some sort of conversation with the patient is required.

Learned helplessness

Positive psychology as a discipline grew from the work primarily of Martin Seligman². Abraham Maslow has been credited with coining the term 'positive psychology' when describing his humanistic psychology³. Maslow has been famed and then criticised for his 'Hierarchy of Needs' as described in his book, Motivation and Personality and elsewhere⁴.

Seligman is renowned for his theory of 'learned helplessness.' When we (or other animals for that matter) are routinely subjected to experiences we believe we cannot control, we come to think, feel, and behave as if we are helpless. It is referred to by Seligman as 'learned' because there is no evidence that we are born with this as some form of inherent trait. It is learned through the conditioning as a consequence of repeated experience. If something is learned that is not innate, it can be unlearned!

The experiments which underpinned or informed Seligman's theory of learned helplessness were conducted on dogs first, then rats, and also observed in elephants.

Baby elephants are fettered, tied with rope, and trained to be obedient. When they grow up, they are clearly strong enough to break free, but remain passively subject to the instructions of their relatively puny masters. Habits formed through repeated experience often prove both limiting and enduring.

Surely not the humans

Humans were also subjected to experiments in this area. In the 1970s, three groups of humans were studied in similar but different conditions. One group was made to listen to obnoxious and loud noises but they could stop the noises by pressing a button a few times. Another group had to listen to the same kind of noise but when they pressed the button, nothing happened. The third group was subjected to no noise. Nothing. Nada!

Afterwards, all participants were made to listen to more loud noise but there was a box with a lever which was effectively the on-off switch for the noise. In the same way as in the animal experiments, the humans who did not have control over the sound in the first experiment usually did not even try to turn the off-switch lever. The others in the human experiment figured out how to get some peace from the racket fairly quickly.

Seligman and his team of researchers suggested that when people are in situations where they have no control, three things happen: thinking suffers, resignation sets in, and depression is experienced.

• Thinking suffers (cognitive deficit). People come to believe the situation is hopeless because past similar situations were hopeless in terms of the person's capacity to change things.
• Resignation to current state happens (motivational deficit). Problem-solving suffers. People's ability to utilise ways and means to get out of unresourceful circumstances is not used.
• Depression happens (emotional deficit). People experience sadness when they believe and come to feel their situation is hopeless and cannot be changed.

Dimensions of powerlessness

Clearly, the depth or severity of experience of a sense of powerlessness is different for each person. Some people are more or less resourceful in challenging situations. Within the context of felt helplessness, such as with the humans subjected to obnoxious sounds with no personal control over the experience, things are pretty clear.

The sense of absence of power or control leads to the learning of helplessness as Seligman suggested. As distinct from feeling powerless over situations there are dimensions of permanence, personalisation, and pervasiveness within the experience.

What may well be a temporary experience comes to be regarded as permanent. For example, I received a bad review at work and the meaning I attribute to this setback is: I am a poor worker, always was a poor worker, always will be, without any evidence to support my opting for such an extreme assessment.

Personalisation means that if something happens to me, it's because of me! My friend becomes very ill and I blame myself for not seeing it coming and acting to prevent this tragedy. The fact that stuff happens independently of my actions is forgotten in favour of self-criticism and inappropriate blame.

Pervasiveness refers to a global attribution to particular experiences. My friend who was ill eventually dies. I decide that I cannot function at work, or in my other relationships, leisure has lost meaning, and so on. One part of my life pollutes all parts of my life. In learned helplessness there can be a failure to compartmentalise, to notice natural boundaries between various departments of life.

Together, these three dimensions of depressed mood and outlook can seem awful and daunting. Positive Psychology suggests, according to Martin Seligman, that optimism can be learned. It is possible to move from a sad stuck state to an optimistic one.

Learned optimism

Understanding of learned optimism⁵ grew out of Seligman's work on helplessness. The emphasis on attitude and resource-building came as strong motivators for recovery in patients living with depression, for example. His departure from the more traditional 'medical model' formed the basis of early positive psychology as we know it today. Within the medical model, the patient presents with signs and symptoms and the physician follows a precise method to reach a diagnosis and prescribe appropriate treatment.

Happiness promised, the early days

The promise and the pursuit of happiness go way back. Religious and philosophical belief systems hold the promise of happiness. For many religions, the experience of happiness is promised if set prescriptions are adhered to. The very act of adherence to the rules attached to particular articles of faith can prove uplifting, fulfilling, even rewarding, with members of religions sometimes choosing to devote their lives to the promotion of their faith.

Following the declared will of a deity (as recorded by some fairly astute scholars) or embracing some philosophical path (advanced by some other fairly astute scholars) is seen as a way to the experience of sustained happiness. The ultimate rewards for a life dedicated to compliance with one's particular brand of religion are ambiguously wonderful. The afterlife is profoundly, if unclearly happy, in most if not all religions.

All religions require adherence to some set of rules, laws, or commandments that set them apart. All, or nearly all, promise awesome afterlife rewards, if only to the right kind of people.

The God delusion

An alternative or polar opposite view that belief in a supreme being(s) is unjustified but historically dangerous. Richard Dawkins is among the most prolific and strident opponents of religion from a rational perspective. Dawkins favours the scientific explanations for life, the universe, and everything⁶. He argues against a creator, who actually requires creation presumably by a preceding creator. Dawkins is by no means alone here in rational atheism. Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens are other luminaries in this camp⁷. Harris is a neuroscientist, among other accomplishments, and clearly in rapport with Dawkins. Another member of this trinity is Christopher Hitchens, who published God is not great in 2007⁸. I will refrain from rehashing the theism/atheism debate as I am interested in happiness. Perpetuating that chestnut will serve little purpose, as you might read further and wider to draw your own conclusions about the relevance, benefit, or even dangers of religion for society.

What about the philosophers?

Ancient philosophers explored paths to happiness. Aristotle suggested happiness via insight, self-awareness, and functioning through personal virtues. Effectively, leading a balanced life, or maintaining the 'mean', and developing the whole person is a path to happiness. Happiness is regarded as contingent on one's balanced life and full personal development⁹.

Maximising pleasure and minimising pain worked for the hedonists (from the Greek word for pleasure), however, assumptions about hedonists being solely dedicated to indulgence in pleasure (satisfaction of desires) in the extreme is a misunderstanding. Happy people enjoy pleasure, unhappy people often seek pleasure. Our brain is 'wired' to understanding the distinction between pleasure and pain. Very few of our population end up a complete mess due to their pursuit of pleasure and minimisation of their pain. Hedonism gets a pretty bad rap sometimes from those who misunderstand the reality of pleasure-seeking¹⁰. Furthermore, Epicurus, a hedonist, advocated for a simpler life through the elimination of physical and psychological pain, which supports the elimination of misery and anxiety¹¹. For Epicurus, a cautious pursuit of pleasure delivers happiness where excessive indulgence in pleasure ultimately produces the pain that we are so keen to avoid in the first place¹².

The spoilsport stoics

In contrast to the hedonists, the stoics advocated indifference to both pleasure and pain. Their focus was an unemotional route to stability in life. Stability was regarded as more important than pleasure. Passion, in any of its manifestations, is based on misunderstandings that are inherently unhelpful for the human condition and certainly hold no connection with practical wisdom. One of the later key influencers in stoicism is Epictetus who argued that we must come to understand what we can control and accept what we cannot¹³. It has been claimed that such consideration of locus of control informed psychologist Albert Ellis's formulation of what was to become cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Further, one of the neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) presuppositions, there is no failure, only feedback, was foreshadowed in stoic philosophy.

The stoics did not advocate victimhood in the face of adverse circumstances. Rather, they regarded adversity as inevitable and as a powerful source of learning and personal development¹⁴.

A second of Seneca

Another Roman stoic, essayist, prolific letter-writer, and dramatist, was Lucius Seneca. In political life he became a senior civil servant and successful playwright. He was also banished to exile on the island of Corsica by emperor Claudius. This was because of alleged adultery with Julia Livilla, the niece of Claudius and sister of future emperor, Caligula.

In experiencing the ups and downs of life (to put it mildly), Seneca, after eight years exile, was liberated thanks to the influence of Claudius's wife, Agrippa. He managed to secure his position of influence and became tutor to the soon-to-be emperor Nero. Seneca became wealthy in the service of emperor Nero. Nero, who was notoriously paranoid, was to later instruct Seneca to commit suicide¹⁵.

I mention all of this simply to point out that life has its ups and downs for everyone, and Seneca appears to have kept a certain balance throughout. For example, while in exile, Seneca wrote letters of consolation to his mother. He seems to have been good at adaptation to the practicalities of circumstance. Challenging circumstances demand responses. Seneca delivered through flexible, pragmatic thinking¹⁶.

Here are some Seneca quotes, which for someone born over 2,000 years ago, have real, present-time resonance:

• We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than reality.
• Cruelty springs from weakness.
• The whole future lies in uncertainty.
• He suffers more than necessary who suffers before it is necessary¹⁷.

Seneca, a rather contradictory figure in his time, continues to influence his readers today¹⁸.

Moving on

Without lingering too much in the land of the spoilsport stoics, it is now time to move on to some modern ideas around what makes us happy. In the latter part of the 19th century and beyond, moral actions were regarded as supporting happiness for the greater good in preference to individual satisfactions. Romanticism promoted high passion as well as self-awareness as necessary for the betterment of humanity. In contrast, the discipline of psychology tended to focus on mental illness working within a 'medical model.' Freud sought to turn 'hysterical misery into ordinary human unhappiness'¹⁹.

After World War II, there was significant growth in treatments for returning service personnel. However, it wasn't until the 1960s that there was a shift in orientation from the medical model, referred to earlier, towards positive mental health and wellbeing. Here, Seligman encouraged challenging unhelpful thinking and the appreciation of personal strengths and resourcefulness.

More recently still, Dan Gilbert²⁰ explored how poor we are at predicting what will make us happy. The problem lies in the way we imagine the future. How we feel in the moment influences how we predict our future. As our brains have almost tripled in size in a mere 2 million years, this affords us the capacity to imagine outcomes well in advance of any event. Our pre-frontal cortex, a powerful evolutionary augmentation, gives the capacity to speculate without any risk. We can imagine what could go wrong, assess risk, without any danger. BUT! Our capacity to simulate experience can work badly sometimes.

Dan Gilbert's oops!

Harvard Professor Gilbert did own up to a few errors in his reporting of research in the recorded Ted Talk²¹. Firstly, he compared lottery winners and paraplegics suggesting their reported levels of happiness were the same. They were in fact not as emphatically equal as implied. Secondly, Moreese Bickham, who spent over 35 years in jail for a crime of which he was exonerated, was not guilt-free and proven so based on DNA evidence, as Gilbert stated. Moreese was happy though, even after such lengthy jail time, declaring it a 'glorious experience', according to Gilbert.

Thirdly, Gilbert said the exact opposite of what he intended. He was referring to the challenges associated with more choice than less. He referred to irreversible choice when he intended to say reversible choice. His main message is more important in any case.

In concluding his talk, Gilbert states: 'Our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are chasing when we choose experience.' An expanded and strategic approach to happiness and a fulfilled life has been advanced by Seligman with his PERMA™ model.

PERMA

Seligman suggested a term, PERMA, to denote Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. He regards these as the building blocks of a fulfilled life²² with these five core elements combining to make an enriched, happy, and fulfilled life. Below is a very brief summary.

Positive Emotion

Our capacity to hold positive expectations, accept the present, and unerstand the past. These contribute to a healthier, more resourceful state. Similarly, Eric Maisel in his Life Purpose Boot Camp points to the fact that usually optimism is a superior perspective to pessimism²³. Pleasure and joy are not identical. Pleasure involves need satisfaction whereas joy is more related to intellectual and creative activities.

Engagement

Engagement and absorption in activities are important for our happiness. Deeply focusing on some task or project, for example, supports our wellbeing and happiness. Focused attention targeted at some worthwhile project can engender an experience of timelessness. We may lose track of time. The past evaporates and the future disappears from current awareness, and all that remains in our attention is the dynamic, smooth flowing of the here and now. Calm serenity can be very productive indeed.

Relationships

The power of social connectedness cannot be overstated. We blossom in the satisfaction of our need for belonging, connection, intimacy and social engagement. From family units to networks of friendships we thrive in a context of healthy community. Conversely, we suffer greatly in experiences of isolation. To be ostracised, excluded from group interaction, can be a powerful punishment.

Meaning

Having life purposes and making meaning investments are important for happiness and fulfilment. Chasing pleasure and material excess can bring more discontent than happiness. In her book on the top five regrets of the dying, Bronnie Ware describes her experiences of caring for people nearing end of life. The significance of meaning for happiness is borne out by her experiences²⁴.

Accomplishments

Goal-directed activity and purpose-inspired directions are important for our experience of happiness. Even the expenditure of goal-directed effort can prove satisfying and motivating even before the goal is accomplished. Successful goal achievement also is a further powerful motivator to do more. Success breeds success and happiness!

A biology of happiness

Neuroscientists from the mid 20th century, with improved understanding of chemicals known as neurotransmitters as well as technological advances, identified the pleasure centre in the brain (the nucleus accumbens). When the nucleus accumbens is stimulated in humans they identify as experiencing pleasure and show this by, say, smiling and laughing and even report experiencing intense uplift such as euphoria²⁵.

One neurotransmitter, dopamine, apart from regulating movement, controls the brain's reward and pleasure centres. This means it can assist with perceiving benefits and rewards as well as strategies to achieve those rewards.

Low dopamine is linked to addiction and a certain dopamine receptor is associated with risky behaviours. So, dopamine is associated with inducing the emotion we call happiness, compulsive behaviours, Parkinson's Disease, risk-taking, and even 'joggers' high²⁶. Happiness, as an emotion, produces physical sensations as blood circulation changes.

But why do we operate this way?

One theory is that, as a species, our survival depends on finding sustenance and procreation. It's much more useful if we like to do these things. If we like doing things such as eating, drinking, and having sex, we tend to repeat them. Neurotransmitters' job done! Species survives. Awesome!

Since the 1990s, researchers have been using particular scanning technology called positron emission tomography (PET). These deliver three-dimensional images of the brain in action. It has been found that negative emotions are activated in different parts of the brain to positive ones. It has been suggested that meditative practices can promote an effective path to happiness. So, feelings of well-being (or distress) are related to changes in brain chemistry. Changes in brain chemistry can be influenced by meditative practices²⁷.

Conclusion

I've attempted a very brief walk through some aspects of this sometimes elusive emotion we call happiness. From religion to philosophy to the early days of psychology. From the lessons from learned helplessness to learned optimism and all the while having a PERMA!

I sketched some of the elements, the mechanics as I sometimes say, of what happens in our skull when we experience happiness or even pleasure. There is evidence, and plenty of it, that we can actually do things to experience happiness. We can alter chemical activity in the brain simply by engaging in meditative processes. The Harvard Medical School Special Health Report into Positive Psychology has in fact reported on the left prefrontal cortex being particularly active in a group of Tibetan monks. These people have considerable experience in meditation. If we do a little meditation, or a lot, we are able to change our experience.

¹ 1. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/positive-psychology-harnessing-the-power-of-happiness-mindfulness-and-inner-strength
² https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/learned-helplessness-seligman-theory-depression-cure/#definition. See also https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/abraham-maslow/#pp and Seligman, M. PhD. Authentic Happiness. Random House Australia (2002).
³ https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/abraham-maslow/#pp
⁴ https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/hide-and-seek/201205/our-hierarchy-needs
⁵ For a very brief summary, http://www.butler-bowdon.com/martin-seligman---learned-optimism.html
⁶ Dawkins argues for the fundamental irrationality of religion as well as dangerous outcomes for society such as war, social division, and even deadly intolerance in The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Random House UK (2016). https://www.booktopia.com.au/the-god-delusion-richard-dawkins/book/9781784161927.html
⁷ Harris penned the best-selling, award-winning End of Faith, WW Norton & Co, 2004. Here he lays out how religion is used to justify terrorism and how religion itself and not some religion is the problem https://samharris.org/books/the-end-of-faith/. This work generated a lot of critical feedback which led to his later work Letter to a Christian Nation, where he responds to the thousands of critical letters he received as a non-believer https://samharris.org/books/letter-to-a-christian-nation/
⁸ Christopher Hitchens is another notable atheist who has featured in numerous debates around the world arguing against religion. For example, you may be inclined to view one of his YouTube recordings where he introduced a debate seeking to defend the proposition that 'We'd be better off without religion.' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpKmje75kZo
⁹ Here is a link to a very brief overview of Aristotle's contributions https://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/aristotle/. As my article is devoted to supporting greater happiness, I thought it sensible to include some of the contributors to the historical perspectives on happiness.
¹⁰ Here are some accessible articles which probe the variable interpretations of hedonism and the assessment of pleasure from the point of view of the experiencer or the watcher https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hedonism/ and https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/newsletters/authentichappiness/happiness.
¹¹ Epicurus and hedonism links from Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy https://iep.utm.edu/hedonism/#H2.
¹² https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hedonism/
¹³ You may explore the very useful brief description of stoicism from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
¹⁴ Here is a very concise YouTube video from Ryan Holiday on stoicism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oVsLkPqXWo
¹⁵ Here is a link to a very brief blog from the Daily Stoic website https://dailystoic.com/seneca/
¹⁶ Here is a link to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's section on Seneca, which I believe highlights the practical applications of his own stoicism to the vicissitudes of life https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/seneca/.
¹⁷ Quotes from Seneca https://fs.blog/intellectual-giants/seneca/
¹⁸ Here is a link to a YouTube video of an audio book Seneca of a happy life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2A-hgYqQio.
¹⁹ http://freudquotes.blogspot.com.au/2016/11/freud-on-transforming-hysterical-misery.html
²⁰ https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/daniel-gilbert-research/ and a Ted Talk by Dan Gilbert on happiness https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy
²¹ Dan Gilbert's corrections to his Ted Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy/corrections
²² A brief but succinct description of Seligman's PERMA model https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/perma-model/
²³ Eric Maisel's Life Purpose Boot Camp is described in psychology today https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/rethinking-psychology/201409/life-purpose-boot-camp
²⁴ Bronnie Ware The top 5 regrets of the dying https://www.hayhouse.com/the-top-five-regrets-of-the-dying
²⁵Bronnie Ware on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAcQfn96yFk

Additional sources

https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/positive-psychology-harnessing-the-power-of-happiness-mindfulness-and-inner-strength

https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201105/dopamine-primer

George Owen is a hypnotherapist based in Sydney, Australia. With a long-standing passion for adult education, George has been lecturing within the behavioural science arena for over two decades.