The Glee Club

Seligman teaches that knowing your strengths makes it easier to achieve more meaningful forms of happiness. He identifies three forms of happiness: the pleasant life, the good life and the meaningful life. The pleasant life is what most Americans think of when considering whether or not they are happy moment to moment. Many people are cheerful; others are not, a trait which studies show is for the most part heritable. Identical twins usually have a similar level of good cheer, which leads researchers to suspect that mood is largely dependent on genes.

There are shortcuts to achieving the pleasant life. "You can take drugs, masturbate a lot, or engage in mindless entertainment," Seligman says. It will probably make you happy for a bit, but at some point, most people look in the mirror and ask, "Is this all there is?" Seligman calls this the "fidgeting until death" syndrome.

Enter the higher paths to happiness: the good life and the meaningful life, both attained by harnessing one's strengths. The good life comes through deep engagement in work, family life or other activities. The meaningful life comes from devotion to an institution or a cause greater than oneself. Some find meaning in family or friendships; for others it might be charity or a religion. So instead of the sports car as the antidote to a midlife crisis, positive psychology recommends that you savor time with your kids or find a way to give to others, whether they are needy strangers or your own kin. Data from those who have completed the Philanthropy vs. Fun exercise in Authentic Happiness have said the act of giving provides more long-lasting good feeling than an exercise of hedonic pleasure.

Amanda Levy, an executive coach with Andros Consultants in Morriston, Ontario, says the Authentic Happiness coaching has given her new tools for her lifelong battle with depression, which she traces to a family history of mental illness. "I now have this marvelous way of looking at myself that confirms that I'm not demented and that has shown me day-to-day ways to improve my well-being." Levy swears by the Longcuts vs. Shortcuts exercise, which advocates spending extra time on a routine activity. Instead of buying Mom a birthday card, "longcut" the task by creating one yourself. Instead of juggling e-mail and paying bills while dutifully chatting on the phone with a friend, why not just focus on your friend? "Most of us multitask and end up completely empty at the end of the day," says Levy. "If you take one task and longcut it, you end up feeling that the day is far more meaningful."

Seligman's blend of self-awareness and optimistic thinking is hardly new, but novelty is not a selling point: Seligman freely admits that he draws on a large body of research from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's concept of "flow," or absorption in a task, to Robert Emmons' findings on gratitude. Positive psychologists are, however, the first group to pull together these strands, push for more research and zealously disseminate the results. "It would be really easy to say, 'What's the big deal here?'" says Levy. In fact, the positive psychology method of focusing on existing personality strengths has made the course more useful than traditional counseling, she says. "I don't need my past delved into," explains Levy. "I just need to know how to manage a blue day."

The movement has its detractors, in part due to the relentless push to see life's glass as half full. Some, including Barbara Held, a psychology professor at Bowdoin College in Maine, say the discipline needs to address both disease and ways to increase positive mood. "If psychology is going to be whole, we need to study the good and bad together," she says. The positive psychology movement is an example of what Held calls the "tyranny of the positive attitude," a trend she says is pervasive in the U.S.

Indeed, there is a push in some public and private sectors to show the benefits of being optimistic. For three years, the John Templeton Foundation sponsored a $100,000 Positive Psychology prize, which was awarded to a scientist whose findings further research into positive emotion. Seligman himself has helped raise some $30 million to sponsor research in positive psychology.

Julie Norem, a professor of psychology at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and author of The Positive Power of Negative Thinking, says years of research have taught her that pessimists are generally as successful in life as optimists, though their tactics are far different. For so-called defensive pessimists, who account for about 25 percent of the population, mentally bracing for a variety of imagined worst-case scenarios is a natural coping strategy.

"It helps them feel that they're in control," says Norem. "They often say: 'I wish others could understand that they don't need to cure me. My biggest problem with my pessimism is other people's reactions to it.'"