You don’t have to be born lucky to enjoy a great experience in life.  Life satisfaction comes from having very specific attitudes and engaging in very specific activities. These aren’t a mystery either.  They can be learned AND they must be practiced to be optimally effective in producing good results.

Can you believe over 4,000 books were written on “happiness,” last year alone? I would argue from a science perspective that most of them are pop psychology and not worth your time (and money), but there are those dedicating their careers to a rigorous examination of what leads people to be satisfied with their lives.  In January I traveled to Claremont Graduate University in Los Angeles to hear a number of the contemporary researchers talk about the things we can do to improve our experience of life. And, having used this material for 10 years in my practice, in an 80 hour experiential program I teach at Evergreen, and yes, even creating and implementing programs in prisons, the research is clear that doing specific things leads to greater life satisfaction.

Now, people do not feel better in the Pollyanna, or “don’t-worry-be-happy” sense. Challenge, adversity, loss, and suffering will always be a part of life. However, by investing time and effort in the right things we can:

1) have more positive emotion on a daily basis

2) have stronger character traits (gratitude, courage, forgiveness, etc.) at home and at work

3) make a greater investment in institutions and communities that enhance marriages, parent-child bonds, workplaces, and organizations.

The critical issue to being “happier” is in living these activities every day for the rest of your life. In other words, we never “arrive” at happiness, but rather must practice the attitudes and activities that bring life satisfaction during the moments, hours, days and weeks of our lives.  We’ve all seen someone work very hard to control their weight, quit drinking or build a good marriage, and then had some challenge–something completely out of the blue–come along to threaten all that had been accomplished.  That’s when the practice of these life satisfaction skills really comes into play.  If you’ve strengthened those skills, you have the “muscles” built up to handle such obstacles and difficulties.  If not, it’s more likely you’ll slip back into the negative old patterns that were unhelpful.  Worse case scenario, you slide back to an even more negative situation than you started with!

This month, I will be starting an 8 week program in one of the Washington State prisons, and the 80 hour spring quarter program at Evergreen. Come back to this website each week to view the activities that the students and inmates will be doing to invest in pleasurable, engaged, and meaningful lives.  (Also, see previous articles on life satisfaction and gratitude)