Are you a pleasure seeker or a meaning seeker?

Does this ever happen to you? I was driving to work one morning and all of a sudden it hit me...I felt totally happy and content. There was no particular reason. I just was. I had picked up a healthy breakfast treat from the bakery, the sun was shining, the flowers along the Rideau Canal seemed more colorful than usual, and I was singing along with a catchy tune on the radio. For that moment, I forgot my worries, my aches and pain (from too much running) and just was at peace with the now. I caught myself smiling and thought "Look at that. A glimpse of happiness. Right now. Just because."

In his book "A New Earth" Eckhart Tolle urges us to slow down and savor the every day miracles of life. Simple miracles like our breathing in and out or a child's laughter or tree leaves dancing in the wind. Tolle teaches us to quiet the incessant chatter of the ego and accept that the only thing that really matters is the present moment (the past is over and the future has not arrived, there is only the now).

Martin Seligman, the father of Positive Psychology, also talks about this concept of investing yourself totally in the moment. He calls it "the flow". Flow means being so intesely concentrated on what you are doing that you lose track of time. You become one with the activity. Seligman gives the example of a musician getting inspired to write a new piece of music and the melody just flows out of him. In a way, it's as if the music has a life of its own and the musician is simply the vehicle for it to be born.

In his research on happiness, Martin Seligman has come to distinguish three types of happy lives.

1. The Pleasant Life: Individuals who live this life try to get as much positive emotions and pleasures as they possibly can. This constant search for pleasures may involve things like trips, wild parties, fast cars, designer clothes, gourmet food, etc. This is the kind of life that Hollywood stars like George Clooney and Pamela Anderson live. The downside to this kind of life is that pretty soon you are looking for better and more sources of pleasures. Seligman gives the metaphor of having ice cream to explain a phenomena he calls habituation. When you take your first bite of ice cream you taste it 100% but with each subsequent bite the pleasure weakens. You get used to the taste and it does not give you the same sensation as when it was a novel experience...

Focus is on outside satisfaction.

2. The Good Life: A person who has a good life according to Seligman is someone who is engaged in his life. They have work that brings them income and satisfaction. They have a strong social network of family and friends. They have leisure activities that allow them to totally invest themselves in something pleasurable and lose track of time for a while. (Seligman calls this concept flow.)

Focus in on satisfaction that comes from engagement with others.

3. The Meaningful Life: In a meaningful life you use your highest strengths for something larger than yourself. You dedicate yourself to philanthropy. You gain happiness by being of service to others. One might think of Mother Teresa as a role model for this kind of life.

Focus is on satisfaction that comes from helping others.

Seligman's research has shown that if you measure the intensity of happiness along a time line continuum we can observe that initially the intensity of happiness may be high for someone who lives from one pleasant emotion to the next but it is however short lived. On the other hand, the pursuit of meaning is the strongest and more reliable source of happiness. The life satisfaction you derive from engagement, the marker of a good life, is a close second.

How would you rate your life?

If you were to give yourself a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 on the happiness quotient of your life what would it be?

Seligman believes that we can be taught how to be happier. If you go on his website you can complete a battery of tests that will give you some insight into what you need more of and less of in your life. I just did the Authentic Happiness Inventory Questionnaire and I was pleasantly surprised. I have made some real progress in the last few years... What about you?