Brian Johnson summarizes Martin Seligman’s book Flourish and contrasts Seligman’s earlier Authentic Happiness theory with his newer Well-Being theory. The core of Well-Being theory is the PERMA model (Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Achievement), which Johnson presents as the target for "flourishing" rather than life-satisfaction alone. The video moves from theory into practice: signature strengths, the "what went well" journaling exercise, a "psychology of dealing with it" (functioning despite depression, illustrated with Lincoln and Churchill), the ABCs of optimism (beliefs shaping feelings), the roles of character/grit and 10,000 hours, and a critique of GDP as a measure of well-being.
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Hey guys, this is Brian with another philosopher's notes TV episode. Today we're going to talk about the book Flourish, A Visionary New understanding of happiness and well being by Martin Seligman. Martin Seligman is essentially the godfather of the positive psychology movement. Brilliant guy. We've done notes on his learned optimism and authentic happiness. And this is his most recent book. It's called Flourish. And he identifies the difference between his authentic happiness theory, which was the name of his last book, and his new well being theory. And he basically moves from measuring happiness as a function of life satisfaction to measuring well being in a sense of flourishing. We're going to talk a little bit about the theory well being theory versus authentic happiness theory. We'll look at what constitutes well being theory and then we're going to move into the practical stu and look at some big ideas on how we can optimize our flourishing. We'll look at strengths and virtues, what went well today. A great exercise, the psychology of dealing with it. We'll talk about Churchill and Lincoln who are both depressives but who were able to deal with it and live extraordinary lives. Really cool idea. We'll talk about the ABCs of optimism. We'll talk about character. In 10,000 hours we will look at optimist versus pessimists. And we will look at measuring well being versus GDP. Very interesting. We'll see how much of that we can get through in this quick lesson 10 minute episode. Again, this book differentiates his prior authentic happiness theory with his current well being theory. Now the well being theory, let's just take a quick look at it. Authentic Happiness theory. The topic was happiness. They measured life satisfaction and the goal was to increase life satisfaction. With well being theory the topic is well being versus happiness. The measures are positive emotion engagement meaning positive relationships and accomplishment forms this acronym perma. We'll talk about that more in a second. And then the goal is not to increase life satisfaction. It's to increase flourishing by increasing positive emotions. Engagement, meaning positive relationships and accomplishment. Really cool stuff. So perma, that is the cornerstone of the well being theory. Perma, Positive emotion, Engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. The book is obviously all about how do we optimize each of these domains. For now we are going to take a quick look at some of my favorite ideas. So out of the theory into the practice. The first one is strengths and virtues. So we talk about strengths and virtues all the time. I recently did a video. I'll link to it on discovering your strengths and using them often in your life. This basically forms the underlying foundation of well being theory. It undergirds everything. Your positive emotions, your engagement, your relationships, your meaning, your achievement, all come down to having a foundation of these signature strengths. So I'll link to the video I did on how to discover and live your signature strengths. For now, going to move on. And the next thing is another video I did called the what Went well exercise. I will link to that for a full review. But the basic idea is really simple. For a week before you go to bed, spend 10 minutes and write down three things that went well today and why they went well. Three things that went well and why. We've talked a lot about gratitude, journaling and how that boosts happiness so significantly. We'll well, this is huge, just like that. And in many ways even more powerful because you're focusing your mind on what's working in your life and you're seeing why, you're seeing the reasons behind it, which is just extraordinarily powerful. So try it out. What went well today in your life and why? Really, really powerful stuff. Check out the video for more on that. Moving on. Next big idea is all about dealing with it. So Seligman tells us things. Think about Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, two severe depressives. They were both enormously well functioning human beings who dealt with their black dogs and their suicidal thoughts. Lincoln came close to killing himself in January 1841. Wow. Both learned to function extremely well even when they were massively depressed. Think about that. Functioning extremely well even when they were massively depressed. So one thing that clinical psychology needs to develop is in light of the heritable stubbornness of human pathologies, is a psychology of dealing with it. We need to tell our patients, look, the truth is that many days, no matter how successful we are in therapy, you will wake up feeling blue and thinking life is hopeless. Your job is not only to fight these feelings, but also to live heroically, functioning well even when you are very sad. The psychology of dealing with it. We have this idea that we're somehow going to magically remove all negative emotions. And Seligman tells us, look, there's a genetic predisposition here, a biological underpinning that predisposes many of us to sadness, anxiety and anger. And he says those traits can only be ameliorated, not wholly eliminated. Knowing that when we feel a certain way, we ask ourselves the question now, what needs to be done? And we heroically move through the days, even when we don't feel like doing a whole heck of a lot. Really powerful idea here. The psychology of dealing with it. I've got a video on now. What needs to be done. I'll link to that as well. Excuse me. So then let's move on to the ABCs of optimism. This is a really cool idea, ABC. Let's go through them. The beliefs we have the B, about adversities we face. The A, determine the consequent feelings C. So adversity is influenced by beliefs, which creates our consequent feelings A, B, C. We talk about this all the time. A lot of people think it goes adversity, consequences, this bad thing happened. Therefore I feel this way. Well, nope, there's something in between the beliefs. We can step in between this stimulus and this response by choosing better beliefs, more empowering beliefs. Really, really powerful idea, abc, checking on your beliefs again. We talk about this throughout the videos. We want to optimize our minds that way. How about character in 10,000 hours? Guy named Erickson is a leading researcher. We talk about this 10,000 hour principle a lot. I'm going to go through it quickly right now. Basic idea is if you want to be world class at anything, whether it's a piano soloist or anything, chess player, etc. Put in your 10,000 hours, etc. Etc. What is the predictor of whether or not someone will put in their 10,000 hours character? Do they have character? And specifically do they have self discipline? Something we talk about again a lot. And Seligman goes off on something called grit. I'll do a video just on grit, but it's basically high persistence matched with high passion for an objective. High passion, high persistence equals grit. It's the hallmark of greatness. Really powerful stuff. Here's an interesting fact for you. Self discipline out predicts IQ for academic success by a factor of two. It's extraordinarily powerful to know. You give me someone's iq, you give me their self discipline and we can predict their level of success twice as more powerfully with the self discipline measure than the iq. It's all about getting ourselves do what needs to get done, when it needs to get done. It is the queen of all virtues. Roy Baumeister says we're going to do a video on his book Willpower soon. Great stuff. I'm not going to have time to go into the difference between optimists and pessimists here. I'll do a full video on that. But check out Learned Optimism where we go into detail on it. The very, very quick story is the optimist sees challenges as temporary, changeable and local, whereas the pessimist thinks they're permanent, can't do anything about it, and they're pervasive. Lots of good stuff there. We'll go into another time. Now finally, measuring GDP versus well being. Fascinating stuff. Did you know that gdp. Every time he's talking about the fact that in GDP negative things come in. Economists call them regrettables. Right? Regrettables go into GDP where the GDP actually goes up. Every time two automobiles collide, every time there's a divorce, the GDP goes up. People are spending money on it. Every time people take antidepressants, the GDP goes up. Now what that tells us is the GDP going up isn't necessarily a great predictor of our happiness and well being going up. And in fact, although the GDP over the last 50 years has tripled in the US, life satisfaction has remained flat. And depression, many people say, is 10 times more likely today than 50 years ago. Now this ties into the whole extrinsic versus intrinsic stuff we talk about a lot. We need to look at our own personal lives. Are we trying to maximize our internal gdp, making more money and all these good things? Well, no. There's a correlate. We want to pay attention to the things that truly lead to happiness. The intrinsic variables of deep relationships, growing as a human being and making a contribution, etc. Obviously all part of a longer conversation. For now we will wrap it up. That is a quick look at flourish happiness versus well being theory. We've got the perma, positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement. We want to focus on strengths, what went well today and why psychology of dealing with it even when we don't feel like doing something. The ABCs take care of your beliefs. Character in 10,000 hours. Quick look at optimist versus pessimist and measure your well being personally rather than the pure gdp. There you go. Hope you enjoyed. Look forward to sharing more with you soon. Have another great day. Bye.
