Martin Seligman's Concept Of Happiness

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feeling of exhilaration. Happiness is enduring satisfaction with one’s life as a whole. It is an overall evaluation of the quality of the individual’s authentic experience. It calls for balance and positive affectivity over a long period of time. In a similar assertion given by Fordyce, it is accounted to all the pleasant and unpleasant experiences in the recent past. Bentham (1789) and Kahneman (2000) supported the idea of Fordyce that happiness is the sum of pleasure and pains and it underlies with the overall evaluation of life. The qualities of life and kinds of satisfaction pertain to the diverse sources or determinants of happiness of an individual. These put in a nutshell the various sources which are included in the development of the …show more content…

Happiness has three dimensions namely the pleasant life, the good life, and the meaningful life. The pleasant life is achieved if an individual learns to appreciate and value the basic pleasures like companionship, the natural environment and bodily needs. The first dimension of Seligman regarding happiness is in contradiction of Veenhoven’s idea of happiness that it is not merely pleasure and stimulation of the basic senses. However, Seligman argued that an individual can evolve from this initial stage if he or she can experience the good life which is realized through discovering one’s set of values and strengths, and employing them productively to advance lives. Modern theories of self-esteem established the idea of believing one’s abilities and worth or value. It is the extent to which one likes, accepts, and respects oneself (Masters & Wallace, 2011). Likewise, life is only genuinely satisfying if one is able to discover the value within. One of the most superlative ways of discovering this value is through nourishing strengths with the goal of contributing to the happiness of others. The concluding stage which is meaningful life pertains to the deep sense of fulfillment by employing the strengths not only for oneself. The theory reconciles two contradicting views of human happiness between individualistic approach and altruistic approach. The goal to take care of oneself and improve one’s set of potency is reunited with the value of sacrificing for greater function. (http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org). The last dimension of Martin Seligman’s theory which is meaningful life supports the concept utility of life that existence has a purpose and for others. The three fractions of Martin Seligman’s definition of happiness serve as one the frameworks of the development of happiness scale. It propels the idea of an escalating source

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