What Positive Psychology can teach us about flourishing

Written By Kim Slipski

What is Positive Psychology?

The Dalai Lama was once asked about the meaning of life. His response was simple: “The meaning of life is happiness.” However, he then went on to say that the easy question was determining what happiness means. The harder question was: “What makes people happy?”

Insert the field of positive psychology.

Historically, and especially influenced by funding World War II, the academic field of psychology has predominantly focused on understanding and treating mental illness and psychiatric disorders. There are many exceptions - especially in the humanistic discipline - but by and large it was felt that psychology was primarily focusing on “how to bring people up from -8 to 0, but not so good at understanding how people rise from 0 to +8” (“What (And Why) Is Positive Psychology?”).

During his tenure as president of the American Psychological Association, it was Dr. Martin Seligman, the contemporary “father of positive psychology,” who advocated for expanding the lens outside of what was “wrong” with people, and to instead redirect some of those resources toward understanding what makes people thrive. He encouraged researchers to explore questions such as:

  • What makes people happy?

  • What tools and interventions can boost happiness?

  • What creates meaning?

  • How do we define well-being or a life well-lived?

Positive psychology broadens the focus from mental illness to the much larger arena of mental health. Over the last few decades, scientists have effectively researched the impact of things like gratitude on well-being, or the role of exercise, spirituality, and other factors on mental health. Below are a few of the most fundamental ideas and frameworks that come from positive psychology, as well as a few book recommendations for further reading.


Top Positive Psychology Insights & Ideas

Much of Your Happiness is a Within Your Control

If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.

- Oprah

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a psychologist who studied the influence of different factors - including genetics, life circumstances, and the stuff you can control - on one’s happiness. The results might surprise you.

While genetics have a pretty significant impact on our baseline happiness (50%), almost half of our happiness (40%) still lies within our own control, and only an average of 10% is attributable to our circumstances!

That means that whether we win the lottery or not, it’s oftentimes our thoughts, mindset or the intentional actions we pursue that make a bigger difference in our overall happiness. Plus, we largely become habituated to circumstances. Just think of the last time you thought that that raise or new relationship would be the final key to your happiness, only to come back to baseline a few months later.

How You Can Apply It: What can you do that is within your control to increase your overall happiness?

The PERMA Model of Well-Being

The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who, in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually.

- Martin Seligman

Still, the field of positive psychology strongly suggests that “happiness” is neither the single nor necessarily even the most important indicator of well-being. We all experience loss, disappointment, and those pesky bad days. Albeit hard, grief, mourning and a good cry can be healthy and rich parts of the human experience. Would we sacrifice them entirely to be “happy” 100% of the time?

Instead, Dr. Seligman developed a framework for human flourishing that expands the components of well-being into several additional dimensions, outlined below:

Positive Emotion: Exactly what it sounds like. The experience of positive emotions such as happiness, joy, interest, excitement, gratitude, content.

Engagement: Interest and deep states of involvement, such as in a hobby, or at work. This can occur when strengths and values align with the projects we commit ourselves to. Oftentimes when we are fully engaged, we lose track of time and experience a state of “flow.”

Relationships: Positive and supportive friendships, romantic relationships, family bonds, and the like. Having people to lean on in times of need and even enhance life’s experiences.

Meaning: A sense of purpose, fulfillment, or commitment to a shared value or belief. An understanding and making meaning of the world and life’s circumstances.

Accomplishment: A sense of mastery or contribution. Continuous growth and achievement.

Seligman’s model also inherently suggests that there is no “one-size fits all” approach. Different people will place more value on different areas of their lives. The idea is simply to recognize that well-being and a positive human experience spans across multiple domains of life, and to optimize to what’s important to you.

How You Can Apply It: Take a moment to reflect on each above domain. What areas do you value most? How are you doing in each?


Which Life is the “Best” Life?

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

- Viktor Frankl

Positive psychology has also used research to explore another age-old question: What type of life do you want to live? One that makes a difference? Or one that provides the most for you and your family? One of freedom and adventure? Or stability and financial security?

Well, Seligman also studied 3 different different approaches life, each focused on a different element of well-being. Their findings? People were most satisfied with a balance (hot tip: balance is always the answer).

Let’s look at the different lifestyles he outlined:

The Pleasant Life: This approach to life is mostly focused on optimizing for positive emotion. It seeks experiences that will keep you feeling good - from more hedonistic drives for pleasure and novel experiences, to more subtle routes such as savoring and practicing mindfulness.

The Good Life: This is a highly engaged life. One in which a person finds his or her strengths and actively uses them to enhance life in the realms of family, love, work, and more. It is cognitively and emotionally stimulating.

The Meaningful Life: This life strives for deep sense of fulfillment, employing personal strengths such as in the “good life,” but for a purpose greater than oneself (religion, politics, etc.)

In his research, Seligman found that life satisfaction was related to combination of all three approaches. However, a Meaningful life was the strongest predictor, followed by the Good (engaged) life. The Pleasant (pleasurable) life had little to no measurable contribution to life satisfaction, but served as a cherry on top when experienced alongside the other two.

How You Can Apply It: Ask yourself what type of life are you living right now? What life do you want to be living? How can you find a little more balance among all 3?


It’s important to clarify that the study of positive psychology is not meant to dismiss or invalidate the reality of life’s challenges, nor to to diminish the importance of studying mental illness. Positive psychology, however, focuses on the aspects of life that can be cultivated and nurtured to prevent or mitigate some of these struggles before they arise. If you’re grappling with some of these questions yourself, positive psychology resources may be a great place to start.


Positive Psychology Book Recommendations:

Kim Slipski
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