{"id":207,"date":"2006-02-12T09:14:08","date_gmt":"2006-02-12T09:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php\/2006\/02\/12\/what_is_happine\/"},"modified":"2006-02-12T09:14:08","modified_gmt":"2006-02-12T09:14:08","slug":"what_is_happine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/?p=207","title":{"rendered":"What is happiness?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This BOSS
\narticle<\/a> has turned my attention once again to Martin
\nSeligman<\/a>, author of<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"
\nAuthentic
\nHappiness<\/a>\"\"
\nand <\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"
\nLearned
\nOptimism<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We all seek to be happy, but how happy can we be and what can make us happy?
\nSeligman suggests there are three components to happiness. He calls them the
\n"hedonistic life" \u2013 searching for happiness through material
\nwealth, the "engaged life" \u2013 being absorbed in what your are
\ndoing, and the "meaningful life" where you serve something bigger
\nthan yourself.<\/p>\n

According to Seligman <\/p>\n

\n

"the amount of meaning and engagement you have are vastly more important
\nthan the amount of positive emotion you have."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

and,<\/p>\n

\n

"there is reason to believe that productivity follows very similar
\nlaws to life satisfaction. That is, it’s related to the amount of meaning
\nyou have at work, to the amount of absorption and flow you have at work,
\nand to a lesser extent, the amount of positive emotion you have at work.
\nThat means to me that if you’re a manager, you need to be attending very
\ncarefully to how much meaning and purpose your employees have. You want
\nto be designing what they do every day to have more engagement, more flow,
\nmore time-stopping. An you also wnat to think about how much positive emotion
\nthere is on the job."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Look at the banner at the top of this page. Seligman’s words strike us as
\nreflecting our own beliefs and values. We have believed for a long time that
\nproviding workers "meaning and purpose" in their jobs is a good
\nthing to do<\/em> for its own sake. If you value the dignity of human existence,
\nit follows that you will want to give people meaningful work. Work they can
\nengage in and be proud of.<\/p>\n

Seligman’s point here accords with another deep belief of mine<\/em> \u2014
\nproviding meaning and purpose in work increases workers’ productivity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In recent days I have come to believe that not only is their productivity
\nincreased but it, and that of the organisation they belong to, is applied
\nin a fundamentally better direction. A direction that resonates with the needs
\nof the world at large.<\/p>\n

This is something I hope to develop more in future articles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This BOSS article has turned my attention once again to Martin Seligman, author of Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism. We all seek to be happy, but how happy can we be and what can make us happy? Seligman suggests there are three components to happiness. He calls them the "hedonistic life" \u2013 searching for happiness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=207"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}