Three paths to happy lives
So the core thesis in Authentic Happiness is that there are three very different routes to happiness. First the Pleasant Life, consisting in having as many pleasures as possible and having the skills to amplify the pleasures. This is, of course, the only true kind of happiness on the Hollywood view. Second, the Good Life, which consists in knowing what your signature strengths are, and then recrafting your work, love, friendship, leisure and parenting to use those strengths to have more flow in life. Third, the Meaningful Life, which consists of using your signature strengths in the service of something that you believe is larger than you are.
Important new evidence
Until this month, the idea that there are three routes to happiness, two of which do not involve any felt positive emotion at all, was merely an untested theory. Both Chris Peterson at the University of Michigan (chrispet@umich.edu) and Veronika Huta at McGill University (vhuta@ego.psych.mcgill.ca) have just tested it with converging results that are startling.
Dr. Peterson devised three sets of questions, one about pursuing and having the Pleasant Life, the other two about pursuing and having the Good Life or the Meaningful Life, and gave them to 150 adult volunteers. You can complete a questionnaire with all of these questions at
www.authentichappiness.org. His target was life satisfaction. He found that both the Good Life and the Meaningful Life were related to life satisfaction: the more Eudaimonia or the more Meaning, the more life satisfaction. Astonishingly, however, the amount of pleasure in life did not add to life satisfaction.