The Secret to Happiness
By Erica Chernofsky
3091
I.S. / S.H.
Jerusalem Post
May. 10, 2007
1. Clinical psychologist Dr. Moshe Talmon has spent the last 30 years asking people what's
wrong with their lives, their minds, their marriages, their careers and anything and everything
else one could possibly complain about. He has spent his days in Tel Aviv analyzing
depression, anxiety, stress, anger, fear and schizophrenia, and then one day, he realized his
job was taking a heavy toll on his own mental health. "My work as a psychologist was centered
around what's bad about people's lives," he says, "and I felt I needed to do something to
balance it. I needed to concentrate more on being content and happy." That's when he
discovered that psychologists in the US had been sharing the same frustration and had already
come up with a solution - positive psychology, a revolutionary scientific approach that asks,
"What's going right?" rather than "What's going wrong?"
2. Clinical psychology as a field had always generally focused on the negative, on what's
wrong and how to fix it. Psychologists had patients examine their faults and delve deeply into
traumatizing memories in order to mend their broken spirits. The idea behind positive
psychology is that in order to eliminate the negative, one must first accentuate the positive.
3. The seeds for the field had been planted in the late 1980s, when University of Illinois Prof.
Dr. Edward Diener began to study subjective well-being by defining, measuring and
determining the causes of life satisfaction, studies that have been illuminated by Seligman's
work. "It's not enough to take people from minus five to zero," says Harvard's positive
psychology expert Tal Ben-Shahar. "It's not enough to just get rid of depression. It may be a
prerequisite, but there's another step afterward, and that's where positive psychology comes
in."
4. The idea was launched in 1996, when Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania
was elected president of the American Psychological Association in a landslide vote. His aim as
a psychologist was to merge practice with science, and as President, his mission became
exploring what he calls the area "north of zero." "The field of psychology was only half-baked,"
Seligman said in a 1999 speech. "We had baked the part about mental illness; we had baked
the part about repair of damage. The other side's unbaked, the side of strength, the side of
what we're good at." That side became the study of positive psychology, of positive emotions,
positive character traits and positive institutions, building upon what had been learned about the
dark side of the mind to promote prevention and mental health.
5. The discipline focuses on cultivating positive emotions and traits like strength, optimism and
self-esteem with the goal of "not only going from zero to five, but becoming more resilient and
strengthening the psychological immune system,” explins Ben Shahar. "Positive psychology is
extremely important for a simple reason," says Talmon. "To make life worth living, people
should understand what really makes them happier and what makes them happier beyond the
immediate pleasure of eating good food or having good sex." "Happiness is much more than the
American dream of a large house, a boat and a fancy car," says Jonathan Doochin, one of BenShahar's former students at Harvard. "It is enjoying every day and making sure one surrounds
himself with the things that are meaningful. Positive psychology cuts away the facade of the
societally idealized version of happiness through a fact-based approach to what actually drives
people to be happy in life."
Positive psychology courses
6. Israeli born and raised, Ben-Shahar attended Harvard as a computer science major.
Popular, champion of the squash team and excelling in his studies, he was nonetheless
unhappy and couldn't figure out why. So like any student searching for the meaning of life, he
switched his majors to philosophy and psychology, and slowly became happier as he realized
he had found his calling. "Initially I had wanted to make myself happier," he says, "but when I
realized I actually was, I wanted to use what I had learned to make others happier." He returned
to Harvard for graduate school and studied positive psychology with Philip Stone, one of its
founders. When he graduated, Ben-Shahar took over Stone's class, which he designed to be
both an academic study and a practical application for students' lives.
7. Crum says Ben-Shahar's course actually changed her life, and as a graduate student at
Yale studying clinical psychology, she says she wouldn't be where she is today without him.
"It's a class on life," she says. "People love it because it's relevant, it's useful, it's practical."
8. POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY has caught on quickly and is already being studied in dozens of
universities around the world. At Harvard, the class has become the most popular at the Ivy
League institution, with 850 students filling the lecture hall every semester to hear Ben-Shahar
teach what has been nicknamed "the course on happiness." "It was fantastic," says Alia Crum,
23, a recent Harvard graduate who signed up for the class after it was recommended by friends.
"In a place like Harvard you wouldn't expect a class on happiness, but you can have all the
intelligence in the world and if you don't have a good sense of self-awareness, you won't get
anywhere." The class taught her to define her values and create a mission statement for life, but
what made it so spectacular, she says, was its charismatic and articulate teacher.
9. The class, like the field, deals with fostering joy, satisfaction, motivation, love, compassion,
surprise, hope, calm and generosity, rather than scrutinizing the negative emotions upon which
psychopathology has been constructed. In a clinical setting, that translates into focusing
treatment on the part of the glass that is half full, says Talmon, who has transformed his
practice to utilize the approach. "That therapeutic hour with the patient is now much more
therapeutic," he says. "The patients realize that what they can change in their lives is drawn
from their strength, their resilience, their positive relationships. It's basically realizing that what
can make us happy comes from what we already have."
Happiness as a process
10. EVERYBODY WANTS to be happy, and statistics show that when asked, most people say
they are. But happiness isn't a one-time achievement, explains Ben-Shahar, it's a lifetime
pursuit, and the question "are you happy," while well-meaning, is not helpful. "People always
ask me if I'm happy," he says in his signature relaxed tone. "It's a difficult question to answer
because it suggests a binary approach - that we are either happy, or we're not. But happiness
is not the end of a process, it is a process. I constantly work on becoming happier. So the more
helpful question to ask is how can I become happier?"
11. How, indeed; it's the million dollar question that every human being would like the answer
to, and through rigorous empirical research, positive psychology is starting to provide some
answers.
12. The first step is analyzing the happiest period of your life, says Ben-Shahar, asking yourself
when did I flourish, when did I thrive, and then analyzing that time and figuring out what it was
you were doing that made you feel so fulfilled. "People always analyze the bad things that
happen and take for granted the positive, and if we don't appreciate the positive, it will wither
and die," he warns.
Factors contributing to happiness
13. The No. 1 predictor of well-being is interpersonal relationships, he continues. People who
have deep, intimate connections, whether with friends, family or spouses, show higher degrees
of happiness. A 2002 study by Diener and Seligman found that "the most salient characteristics
shared by the 10 percent of students with the highest levels of happiness and the fewest signs
of depression were the strong ties to family and friends and commitment to spending time with
them." “Therefore, it is important to work on social skills, close interpersonal ties and social
support in order to be happy," says Diener.
14. Positive psychologists also talk a lot about the mind-body connection. Regular exercise,
defined by Ben-Shahar as 30 minutes three times a week, is vital and has an impact similar to
that of the most powerful psychiatric drugs on our well-being. Meditating or doing yoga for even
15 minutes a day can actually change the structure of the brain, he explains, shifting activity to
the left prefrontal cortex, proven for years to have high activity in happier people. "We don't
have much time for physical activity or for family and friends in our modern world," Ben-Shahar
points out. "Most of us sit in front of computer screens all day, and that's one of the reasons
why depression levels today are so high."
The importance of positive psychology in Israel
15. Worldwide depression levels are in fact 10 times higher than they were in the 1960s, and a
study completed in 2005 found that 75% of Israeli schoolchildren reported having feelings of
anxiety. A 2004 study found that 29.5% of Israelis agreed with the statement "I feel depressed
and gloomy," with 29% also reporting they felt anxious and stressed. And these numbers, say
researchers, have only increased after last summer's war in Lebanon. But the 2004 study also
noted that a sense of social support and optimism about the future of the State of Israel
significantly contributed to traumatic stress resilience and less traumatic stress-related
symptoms.
16. So in a war-ravaged country like Israel, positive psychology couldn't be more necessary. "In
an often difficult reality, such as the one we live in in Israel, it's important to get out of the
routine of only complaining about what's wrong with our country," says Ben-Shahar. Positive
thinking, he says, is critical to make our society more successful and prosperous. "When you
only focus on things that don't work, you create a reality that doesn't work, whereas if you
concentrate on what is working, you can strengthen it and make it more resilient," he says,
drawing a parallel to difficulties in a marriage.
17. Fortunately for Israelis, one of the keys to becoming happier lies in their own religious
tradition, because religious people, notes Ben-Shahar, are generally happier than non-religious
people. They believe in God and therefore have hope and feel there is meaning and purpose to
their lives, all of which are positive emotions. Along with a greater sense of community, religious
Jews also have more social encounters in synagogue and during Shabbat meals with family and
friends. Keeping Shabbat as a day of rest once a week and actually not doing any work is an
anomaly in today's capitalistically driven society, and significantly contributes to one's well-being
and effectiveness. Furthermore, one of the most prominent features of Judaism is thanking God,
which is done from the moment one wakes and then throughout the day, after eating, after
going to the bathroom and until one goes to sleep. A hundred prayers a day are said blessing
God, and this constant show of gratitude has psychological benefits in that it obliges one to
focus on the positive.
18. "Psychologists have realized that focusing only on the bad things is not really helpful," he
says, noting that in a society under continuous stress like Israel, it is even more important to
employ the resilience approach to help people remain functional. "In times of severe stress and
threats, individual therapy that focuses on the problems isn't the treatment of choice, because
during a crisis you need to survive," he says, referring to this summer's war in Lebanon as a
prime example. "The whole community up North needed to be worked with [during last
summer's war], and these approaches work on the large scale. The positive psychology
approach helps people maintain hope, an optimistic outlook for the future, a physical balance
and allows people to deal with everything that's happening." In contrast, he comments that in
Palestinian society, there is not a lot of resilience work being done and depression levels are
very, very high. In these populations living under a perpetual emotional strain, he says, there is
a serious danger of losing hope completely.
19. Talmon says that the approach will catch on quickly here because of its extreme necessity.
"Much of the Israeli existence is geared toward very catastrophic scenarios," he says. "With the
security threat, the existential threat and a culture based on the Holocaust and persecution, life
here is geared more toward preparing for the worst rather than hoping for the best."
20. Ben-Shahar is determined to change that victimized consciousness, and, says Talmon, "he's
going to make a big difference here." In less than two months, Ben-Shahar's new book,
“Happier”, will be released here, and next year, he will begin teaching at the Interdisciplinary
Center in Herzliya, with plans to eventually make the IDC "a world-class positive psychology
center that will offer classes for students, educators and leaders." "We have a problem with
leadership in this country, and in fact all over the world," says Ben-Shahar. "Israelis are too
apologetic. We don't need to apologize for surviving. We have so many virtues, we have
achieved so much with so little as a people, and we need to be proud of it and not focus on how
we are the victims, on how downtrodden we are or how bad we are. We need to stand up
proudly, demand what is ours and stop apologizing. That's what I would like to see from Israel
and the Jews."
How is “positive psychology” different from other self-help programs?
21. While most Israeli experts in the field of psychology remain unaware of the relatively new
approach, and those who do know about it seem thrilled it's coming to Israel, the US media has
on occasion condemned it as a cultish program or a load of happy hoo-ha, and even BenShahar's colleagues at Harvard have expressed disregard. "And there's a tendency for people
to poke fun because it seems trite or superficial. Critics are skeptical whether it really works.
They mention the thousands of self-help books promising to make you happy by the time you
turn the last page.
22. "Positive psychology is not a Pollyanna, happy-go-lucky, everything's wonderful approach,"
explains Ben-Shahar. "It's tied to reality. It relies on science." This is unlike the self-help
movement, he continues, which is only partially based on research and is mostly based on
ideas - albeit interesting ones - that haven't always been tested using the scientific method.
Despite lacking a deep academic grounding, the self-help movement and programs along the
lines of Landmark Education dominated the market of making people happier and more
effective until 1998 and the birth of positive psychology. The movement had charisma and
accessibility, but very often, says Ben-Shahar, "it over-promised and under-delivered" because
it didn't have the rigorous, empirical foundation of academic research.
23. "The average academic journal isn't read by many people," he says. "Positive psychology
creates a bridge between the ivory tower and the main street, bridging academia and the self-
help movement." So while it's not easy to make people happier, it's certainly possible - or, more
accurately, he says, it's possible to help people learn how to make themselves happier.
Practical recommendations
24. Ben-Shahar's six lessons on happiness:
1. Give yourself permission to be human. When we accept emotions - such as fear,
sadness or anxiety - as natural, we are more likely to overcome them. Rejecting our
emotions, positive or negative, leads to frustration and unhappiness. We are a culture
obsessed with pleasure and believe that the mark of a worthy life is the absence of
discomfort; and when we experience pain, we take it to indicate that something must be
wrong with us. In fact, there is something wrong with us if we don't experience sadness
or anxiety at times. The paradox is that when we accept our feelings - when we give
ourselves the permission to be human and experience painful emotions - we are more
likely to open ourselves up to positive emotions.
2. Happiness lies at the intersection between pleasure and meaning. Whether at work or
at home, the goal is to engage in activities that are both personally significant and
enjoyable. When this is not feasible, make sure you have happiness boosters, moments
throughout the week that provide you with both pleasure and meaning. Research shows
that an hour or two of a meaningful and pleasurable experience can affect the quality of
an entire day or even a whole week.
3. Keep in mind that happiness is mostly dependent on our state of mind, not on our
status or the state of our bank account. Barring extreme circumstances, our level of wellbeing is determined by what we choose to focus on and by our interpretation of external
events. For example, do we focus on the empty part or the full part of the glass? Do we
view failures as catastrophic, or do we see them as a learning opportunities?
4. Simplify! We are, generally, too busy, trying to squeeze more and more activities into
less and less time. Quantity influences quality, and we compromise on our happiness by
trying to do too much. Knowing when to say no to others often means saying yes to
ourselves.
5. Remember the mind-body connection. What we do - or don't do - with our bodies
influences our mind. Regular exercise, adequate sleep and healthy eating habits lead to
both physical and mental health.
6. Express gratitude, whenever possible. We too often take our lives for granted.
Learn to appreciate and savor the wonderful things in life, from people to food,
from nature to a smile Every night before going to bed write down at least five
things you are thankful for.
25. Positive psychology can be applied and integrated into every institution - whether it be a
marriage or a school - most of which fail to nurture the wellsprings of happiness. "In the past,
when we failed, as fail we must, there was spiritual furniture we could fall back on for
consolation - our relationship to God, our patriotism, extended families, community. However,
we've seen a systematic waning of all this spiritual furniture in the last two generations where
depression has increased so drastically," Seligman said in a discussion on the Australian ABC
radio network. But the point he makes is that positive psychology is universally invaluable today,
a sensitive time in which modern technology is replacing the things that truly matter and make
us happy.
Secret of Happiness
Global Questions
1. What is the main idea of the article?
a. Positive psychology is gradually replacing traditional psychology
b. Positive psychology is particularly beneficial in the Israeli reality
c. Unlike other self-help programs, positive psychology relies on science
d. Positive psychology helps the patient by focusing on positive emotions
8 pt
2. When did the clinical psychologist Dr. Talmon realize that he needed to change the
focus in his work?
When ___________________________________________________
8 pt
3. How is positive psychology different from the traditional psychology?
Complete the sentence.
While the former stresses positive feelings and memories, the latter
_____________________________________________________.
8 pt
4. According to paragraph 5, what are the two aims of nurturing positive emotions?
a. ____________________________________________________
b. ____________________________________________________
10 pt
5. a. According to paragraph 21, has the response to positive psychology been
encouraging?
Yes/ No
Circle the correct answer
Quote a sentence to support your answer.
_________________________________________________________
2+8 pt
6. How does the writer answer the question in the subtitle: “How is positive psychology
different from other self-help programs?”
_________________________________________________________
8 pt
7. Which recommendation refers to happiness as an outcome of one’s overall feeling rather
than one’s material well-being?
Write the number of the recommendation: ________
6 pt
8. What is the status of positive psychology today?
Complete the sentence and circle the right answer:
Positive psychology replaces _______________________,
_______________________, _____________________ and
_______________________. Therefore, it is priceless/ worthless
10 pt
Close Reading Questions:
Paragraphs 13-20
9. Besides positive interpersonal relationships, what other factor affects happiness?
_____________________________
8 pt
10. Why is it easier for Israelis to become happier despite the stressful reality in the country?
a. because of their greater sense of community
b. because of the Jewish religious tradition
c. because of their constant show of gratitude
d. because they keep Shabbat as a rest day
8 pt
11. Which example of using the resilience approach in positive psychology is mentioned in
this article?
__________________________________________________________
8 pt
12. In paragraph 20 Israelis are referred to as having “victimized consciousness”. What is
one manifestation of this in the Israeli behavior?
_________________________________________________________
8 pt