Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Valentine's Day and Happiness
Internationally known psychologist Martin Seligman (http://www.authentichappiness.org) is devoting his life to understanding what makes people happy. Three components of happiness stand out: pleasure, engagement and meaning.
We all know pleasure: anything that gratifies our senses, from sex to food, nice things, clothes, nice restaurants, travel, etc.
Engagement refers to the depth of our relationships. How emotionally satisfying our involvements are: with friends, family, co-worker and romantic partner and even people we meet socially. Engagement is about the quality of the relationships. It's about being able to be present, caring, respectful and interested, in the other person. The more we value the relationship, the more important it is to be caring, interested, caring and respectful and of course, that our partner, friend or co-worker treat us in the same way. It's called reciprocity.
Meaning is how we use our strengths to be of service, for a purpose larger than our own benefit or the benefit of our circle of friends and family. Service can be through volunteering or it can be about making others benefit from your experience through our work. Dave Pelzer, the author of A Boy Called It, is an example of someone who survived hell and has devoted his life to help change the life of others. He uses public speaking and his writing to inspire others and to prevent that what happened to him will happen to others.
How do you fare in those three categories? If you have high quality relationships and your life has meaning, there is a good chance that you will not be an easy prey for the commercialism that surrounds the various "special days" of the year and is especially strong around Valentine's Day. If on the other hand you feel you are consistently "less happy" than "more happy", and you have enough money and stuff, the solution is to look at the categories of engagement and meaning and take action to improve those scores, instead of making the pleasure category "the whole cake" with more stuff. It's like taking an overdose of Vitamin B when what you need is Vitamin A. It will not solve the deficiency.
Is your main relationship strong and healthy? If it is, you may want to do something for your Sweetheart, as the icing on the cake. The card you will choose will express what you feel in your heart and you may want to read the card looking into her/his eyes expressing how you feel cherished and how much you value the relationship. If your relationship is healthy, you will celebrate and the celebration will add to your love, not substitute for it.
If on the other hand your relationship is not strong and healthy, you may simply ignore the occasion and just pretend that "you don't believe in those things" or you may do like many do, and compensate with expensive gifts and outings what's missing in depth and quality, because you are afraid to look deeper, you don't want to know the truth, you are afraid of being alone, etc.
Or this year, you may want to address what's not working in the relationship and vow to see what can be done to repair it (unless there is abuse of any kind, in which case I urge you to get out first and then get help).
Marguerite Tennier, M.A.
http://www.canadascoach.com
We all know pleasure: anything that gratifies our senses, from sex to food, nice things, clothes, nice restaurants, travel, etc.
Engagement refers to the depth of our relationships. How emotionally satisfying our involvements are: with friends, family, co-worker and romantic partner and even people we meet socially. Engagement is about the quality of the relationships. It's about being able to be present, caring, respectful and interested, in the other person. The more we value the relationship, the more important it is to be caring, interested, caring and respectful and of course, that our partner, friend or co-worker treat us in the same way. It's called reciprocity.
Meaning is how we use our strengths to be of service, for a purpose larger than our own benefit or the benefit of our circle of friends and family. Service can be through volunteering or it can be about making others benefit from your experience through our work. Dave Pelzer, the author of A Boy Called It, is an example of someone who survived hell and has devoted his life to help change the life of others. He uses public speaking and his writing to inspire others and to prevent that what happened to him will happen to others.
How do you fare in those three categories? If you have high quality relationships and your life has meaning, there is a good chance that you will not be an easy prey for the commercialism that surrounds the various "special days" of the year and is especially strong around Valentine's Day. If on the other hand you feel you are consistently "less happy" than "more happy", and you have enough money and stuff, the solution is to look at the categories of engagement and meaning and take action to improve those scores, instead of making the pleasure category "the whole cake" with more stuff. It's like taking an overdose of Vitamin B when what you need is Vitamin A. It will not solve the deficiency.
Is your main relationship strong and healthy? If it is, you may want to do something for your Sweetheart, as the icing on the cake. The card you will choose will express what you feel in your heart and you may want to read the card looking into her/his eyes expressing how you feel cherished and how much you value the relationship. If your relationship is healthy, you will celebrate and the celebration will add to your love, not substitute for it.
If on the other hand your relationship is not strong and healthy, you may simply ignore the occasion and just pretend that "you don't believe in those things" or you may do like many do, and compensate with expensive gifts and outings what's missing in depth and quality, because you are afraid to look deeper, you don't want to know the truth, you are afraid of being alone, etc.
Or this year, you may want to address what's not working in the relationship and vow to see what can be done to repair it (unless there is abuse of any kind, in which case I urge you to get out first and then get help).
Marguerite Tennier, M.A.
http://www.canadascoach.com
