Authentic Happiness - Using the new Positive Psychology

In 2009, shortly after I made the decision to focus on Volunteerism during my Sabbatical I attended a General Assembly in Salt Lake City, Utah. I had begun to have casual conversations with those I encountered on the topic of voluntarism. One of those casual conversations was with Rev. David Miller, a newly ordained minister with a background in organizational development who had recently been called to The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito in California. He quickly made the observation that voluntarism went hand-in-hand with faith development. In our brief conversation he made the case for changing the way we look at the whole dynamic of volunteers in our liberal faith communities. It was his belief that rather than try to recruit volunteers to fill positions, we needed to invest our energies in helping our members with their faith development and voluntarism would naturally flow from that development. He suggested that the quality of voluntarism of any individual would be supported by the level of faith development of that individual. He was inviting a radical shift in focus. I was so impressed with how Rev. Miller had framed this issue of voluntarism that I was instrumental in having him present his views in a workshop of our Northeast cluster of congregations back in Florida later that same year.

I was impressed with this concept of the relationship between faith development and voluntarism I struggled with the notion of fostering faith development in a liberal theological context. After all Unitarian Universalism is a non-creedal denomination. I quickly concluded, that for my purposes I would focus not on faith development, but rather on some generally accepted notion of personal development.

I remembered a line from the book "Illusions, the Story of a Reluctant Messiah" by Richard Bach. The line is delivered in the narrative where the Messiah is about to pass through the crowd and leave what looks like a Sermon on the Mount. He says: “In the path of your happiness shall you find the learning for which you have chosen this lifetime.” Could it be that our personal development lies along the path of our happiness? It was this thought that gave me pause when a member of my congregation suggested she and a friend of hers were going to offer a class in the fall based on a book entitled “Flourish” written by Martin Seligman, the self proclaimed founder of the Positive Psychology movement. I downloaded a copy of "Flourish" to my Kindle reader application. What I discovered had a strong appeal. Seligman had broadened the definition of happiness. In fact, he came up with a pneumonic to help his readers remember what he considered to be the five important elements, not just of happiness, but of a sense of well-being. His pneumonic was PERMA. The five elements were: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationship, Meaning and Accomplishment he called these five the permanent building blocks for a life of profound fulfillment, or well-being.

Authentic Happiness :: Using the new Positive Psychology: "

Authentic Happiness is the homepage of Dr. Martin Seligman, Director of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and founder of positive psychology, a branch of psychology which focuses on the empirical study of such things as positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions."