Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being

In "Flourish", the author partly builds on his previous work and partly knocks it down. He abandons his earlier focus on happiness, seeing it as too simplistic, and instead sets out a more multi-dimensional goal of well-being. While happiness and well-being theory share some components, the latter is about much more than feeling cheerful.

The author combines an explanation of his new theory with positive psychology exercises that have a proven track record. You'll find some top tips for increasing your sense of wellness that can be instantly and easily applied. You'll learn how to communicate better with family members, friends and colleagues. And you'll discover your key strengths and weaknesses while learning about self-control, self-discipline and grit.

You'll also hear how positive psychology is being used in schools and the military to increase resilience, improve learning and encourage flourishing. And you'll read about the author's personal and professional journey and about the research that supports positive psychology.

Let's be clear, at this point, that "Flourish" is not a self-help book or a "how to" manual. If you're expecting a step-by-step guide on how to achieve well-being, you'll be disappointed. "Flourish" contains more theory than practice. While the author does include a number of positive psychology exercises, he discusses the science, research and methodology in elaborate detail.

So who's this book for? Well, if you work in the field of positive psychology or are interested in new developments in this area, you'll definitely want to read the latest musings of one of its masters. And if you're in education or the military, you'll be especially interested in this book. You'll hear why later.

That said, anyone who wants to improve their own well-being or wants to see their business go from strength to strength will find some great pointers in "Flourish."

The author's spent the last 45 years teaching and studying psychology. He's been a therapist, and trainer of therapists, for 30 years and a director of clinical training for 14 years. His theories are based on a lifetime of research and practice. He authored the bestsellers "Authentic Happiness" and "Learned Optimism" and he founded the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center.

So keep listening to hear how counting your blessings really can make you feel good, how to build relationships through good communication, and what soldiers are learning in the classroom about mental toughness.

Before we go any further, let's define what the author means by flourishing and why he favors well-being over happiness.

When we're flourishing, says the author, we're cultivating our talents, building deep and lasting relationships with others, feeling pleasure and contributing meaningfully to the world.

While happiness is part of well-being, happiness alone doesn't give life meaning. In his book, "Authentic Happiness," the author divided happiness into three elements: positive emotion, engagement, and meaning.

Positive emotion is what we feel: pleasure, rapture, ecstasy, warmth, comfort and so on. Engagement is about flow: feeling at one with, or absorbed by, a particular activity. Meaning or purpose is about belonging to and serving something you believe is bigger than yourself, for example religion, a political party, a family or a social movement.

To turn happiness into well-being, the author adds two elements: relationships and achievement.

Positive relationships are key to well-being. The high points of our lives almost always involve other people. Achievement is about accomplishment for its own sake, rather than in the pursuit of wealth or fame.

So, well-being is a construct with five measurable elements: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and achievement, or PERMA. You can find out more about the PERMA model on the Mind Tools site.

In theoretical terms, happiness is about feeling good and achieving life satisfaction. Well-being is multi-layered – it's a combination of feeling good and experiencing meaning, good relationships and accomplishment. We should note here that not all the author's peers agree with his new theory, especially his emphasis on achievement.

This theoretical debate dominates Chapter One and sets the tone for the book.

Chapter Two contains some of the positive psychology exercises you heard about earlier, designed to promote flourishing. Let's take a look at one of these.

The phrase "count your blessings" goes back generations and has become a bit of a cliché. But many clichés have a basis in truth, and expressing gratitude for the good things in our lives is a key pillar of positive psychology.

We tend to focus on what went wrong, rather than what went right, and this often leads to anxiety, and depression. Granted, sometimes we do need to expect the worst – our ancestors who didn't prepare for disaster didn't survive the Ice Age. But paying too much attention to the negative affects our mood.

One antidote to negative thinking is an exercise called "What-Went-Well."

The author suggests that every night before bed we write down three things that went well. They could be as simple as "My husband picked up my favorite ice cream for dessert on the way home from work today." But they could be as significant as "My sister just gave birth to a healthy baby boy."

Next to each positive event, answer the question, 'Why did this happen?' For example, if you wrote your husband picked up ice cream, write just next to that "Because he's really thoughtful at times" or "Because I called him to remind him to stop at the grocery store." If you wrote about your sister's baby, you might add "She did everything right during her pregnancy."

This exercise may seem simplistic, but the author says you'll find you'll be less depressed, happier, and keen to keep up doing it six months on. He includes a few case studies from clinical practice, showing this and other exercises involving gratitude produce positive results in depressed patients.

In Chapter Three, the author argues the benefits of positive psychology over more costly treatments like anti-depressant drugs and therapy. Therapy and drugs are about short-term crisis management rather than a cure. Once treatment ends and the benefits wear off, a patient often returns to his or her former way of thinking, the author says.

Positive psychology exercises, in contrast, are self-maintaining once they become a habit, he argues. One such exercise is called "Active and Constructive Responding," which can bring long-lasting improvements to relationships, to communication and to morale.

We really like this exercise and think it's one of the most valuable suggestions in the book. It can be incorporated easily and effectively into a professional or personal setting.

When people tell us about a victory, an achievement or even a minor accomplishment, how we respond either builds the relationship or undermines it. The author says there are four basic ways of responding, but only one builds relationships. The four ways are built around two pairs of opposing reactions: active and passive, constructive and destructive.

Here's an example. Your wife shares with you that she received a promotion at work. The active and constructive response would be to congratulate her, tell her how proud you are and ask her specific details about how it all happened. For example, where was she when she was given the news, what did the boss say exactly and how did your wife respond? You might offer to go out and celebrate. You're smiling and maintaining eye contact with your wife and showing genuine emotion, perhaps by touching or laughing.

Now compare this with a passive and constructive response. In this case, you might just say, "That's good news, you deserve it," but there's little or no active emotional expression.

Things start to go wrong in relationships when we respond actively and destructively. For example, you might answer, "That sounds like a lot of responsibility to take on. Does that mean you'll be home less in the evenings?" You might also frown or furrow your brow. And finally, in a passive and destructive response, you'd ignore your wife and change the subject, perhaps by saying, "What's for dinner?" You'd also avoid eye contact and even turn away or leave the room.

Any response other than the active and constructive one will leave your partner feeling deflated. Over a long period of time, this sort of communication creates distance and harms relationships, whereas an active and constructive response enhances them.

Now, I'm sure we've all been on the receiving end of passive and destructive responses, either in a work or home environment. Perhaps we're now realizing we've sometimes responded in this way too. If you work in an organization where morale is low, employee performance is poor and relationships are difficult, you might want to ask if you and your managers are responding constructively.

Similarly, if your relationships with your siblings, children, spouse, or partner aren't going smoothly, keep an eye on how you're responding and change this if necessary. The author includes examples from his family life where he moved from a destructive response to an active and constructive one, with great results. And once this way of responding takes root, it seems to stick.

The remaining chapters are a mix of theory, practice, autobiography, and interactive exercises covering a range of topics, from positive psychology in schools to self-control and self-discipline, to the impact of positive thinking on physical health and GDP. Of particular note are the two chapters dedicated to the rolling out of positive psychology across the United States military.

The impact of positive psychology on soldiers, with its potential benefits for reducing post-traumatic stress disorder and easing their transition back into civilian life, are fascinating topics. Some readers may feel the author goes into too much detail and includes too much of himself in these chapters, but if you can skip some of the more involved passages, you'll find some useful exercises that can be applied to your own life.

The author and his university are heavily involved in what's known as Master Resilience Training for the U.S. military. This training is initially given to sergeants who then become trainers themselves. The long-term goal is for all incoming soldiers to be trained, and for the army to fully staff the training.

So what does the training involve? Well, one of the modules focuses on strengthening relationships, and soldiers are taught the benefits of active and constructive listening, which you've just heard about. This has helped improve relationships between units and also between soldiers on a tour of duty and their relatives at home.

Other exercises focus on building mental toughness. Soldiers are taught the ABC model created by psychologist Albert Ellis. This model teaches that the emotional consequences of an event – the C in the ABC – don't stem directly from the adversity – the A – but from your beliefs about the adversity – that's the B.

They're also taught about "thinking traps" or unhelpful thought patterns, as well as "icebergs." Icebergs are deeply held beliefs that often lead to out-of-kilter emotional reactions, for example the notion that asking for help is a sign of weakness.

Soldiers identify the iceberg, then ask themselves if it continues to be meaningful to them, if it's accurate in the given situation, and if it's useful. Thanks to such exercises, the culture of asking for help in the army is now shifting, the author says. Sergeants have noted how seeking a counselor or talking to the chaplain is losing its stigma.

It's definitely worth extracting some of these exercises from the military setting and trying to apply them in your own life.

The author ends the book with a bold aspiration: that by 2051, 51 percent of the people in the world will be flourishing. While it's a commendable goal, we think gathering empirical evidence on flourishing is a tall order.

"Flourish" is a compendium of fascinating case studies, scientific research, personal experience and interactive exercises on positive psychology. Unfortunately, this variety of content robs the book of some of its focus. The author also goes off on tangents and writes defensively at times.

"Flourish" claims to offer a visionary new understanding of happiness and well-being. Whether you agree with this will depend on your prior knowledge of popular psychology. Those who work in this field or on its fringes may find "Flourish" is more of a compilation of recent developments than a groundbreaking new theory.

But if you're more of a layperson, "Flourish" gives a good overview of positive psychology and how it's currently being used. And if you can get over some of the denser passages, you'll find some great tips on improving your own sense of well-being and that of those around you.

"Flourish" by Martin Seligmanis published by Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.