REPRISE AND SUMMARY
You took this test of momentary happiness earlier in Chapter 2, You have now read most of this book, taken some of its advice, and done some of the exercises scattered throughout. Let's see what your level of happiness is now. You can take this test on the website if you wish to compare your score to your earlier score, as well as to national norms.
FORDYCE EMOTIONS SURVEY
In general, how happy or unhappy do you usually feel? Check the one statement below that best describes your average happiness.
Extremely happy (feel 23423t1913x ing ecstatic, joyous, fantastic!)
Very happy (feeling really good, elated!)
Pretty happy (spirits high, feeling good)
Mildly happy (feeling fairly good and somewhat cheerful) ____ 6. Slightly happy Oust a bit above normal)
Neutral (not particularly happy or unhappy)
Slightly unhappy Oust a bit below neutral)
Mildly unhappy Oust a bit low)
Pretty unhappy (somewhat "blue" spirits down)
Very unhappy (depressed, spirits very low)
Extremely unhappy (utterly depressed, completely down)
Consider your emotions a moment further. On average, what percentage of the time do you feel happy? What percentage of the time do you feel unhappy? What percentage of the time do you feel neutral (neither happy nor unhappy)? Write down your best estimates in the spaces below: Make sure the three figures add up to 100 percent.
On average:
The percent of time I feel happy ____ %
The percent of time I feel unhappy ____ %
The percent of time I feel neutral ____ %
Based on a sample of 3,050 American adults, the average score (out of 10) is 6.92, and the average score on time is 54 percent happy, 20 percent unhappy, and 26 percent neutral.
My central theme to this point is that there are several routes to authentic happiness that are each very different. In Part I of this book, I discussed positive emotion, and how you can raise yours. There are three importantly different kinds of positive emotion (past, future, and present), and it is entirely possible to cultivate anyone of these separately from the others. Positive emotion about the past (contentment, for example) can be increased by gratitude, forgiveness, and freeing yourself of imprisoning deterministic ideology. Positive emotion about the future (optimism, for example) can be increased by learning to recognize and dispute automatic pessimistic thoughts.
Positive emotion about the present divides into two very different things-pleasures and gratifications-and this is the best example of radically different routes to happiness. The pleasures are momentary, and they are defined by felt emotion. They can be increased by defeating the numbing effect of habituation, by savoring, and by mindfulness. The pleasant life successfully pursues positive emotions about the present, past, and future.
The gratifications are more abiding. They are characterized by absorption, engagement, and flow. Importantly, the absence-not the presence-of any felt positive emotion (or any self-consciousness at all) defines the gratifications. The gratifications come about through the exercise of your strengths and virtues, so Part II of the book laid out the twenty-four ubiquitous strengths, and it provided tests for you to identify your own signature strengths. In Part III, I discussed ways of deploying your signature strengths in three great arenas of life: work, love, and parenting. This led to my formulation of the good life, which, in my view, consists in using your signature strengths as frequently as possible in these realms to obtain authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
In the hope that your level of positive emotion and your access to abundant gratification has now increased, I turn to my final topic, finding meaning and purpose in living. The pleasant life, I suggested, is wrapped up in the successful pursuit of the positive feelings, supplemented by the skills of amplifying these emotions. The good life, in contrast, is not about maximizing positive emotion, but is a life wrapped up in successfully using your signature strengths to obtain abundant and authentic gratification. The meaningful life has one additional feature: using your signature strengths in the service of something larger than you are. To live all three lives is to lead a full life.
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