In 1952, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, an Ohio-born pastor who went on to minister for fifty-two years in New York City, published a book that would go on to change his life and career trajectory. The book’s title? I’m sure you’ve heard of it, at least, as an idea. It’s called The Power of Positive Thinking.
Next installment – Part 2: The Way of Wisdom.
The book earned a coveted place on the New York Times bestseller list for 186 weeks, 48 of which sitting at the top for non-fiction. It launched Peale onto the national spotlight, leading him to write over forty books during his career and achieve success as a popular author, motivational speaker, and television guest. Perhaps most importantly, it helped popularize a new way of seeing the world and approaching life’s problems through positive thinking.
Since its publication, “the power of positive thinking” has become something of a mantra in the self-help world. For those who haven’t read the book themselves, they have certainly heard the phrase and, generally speaking, accept it as a truism. Even as the self-help genre of literature has expanded in the last few decades, it seems that few book titles and ideas have taken root in people’s minds quite like Peale’s.
Shawn Achor and the Happiness Advantage
Fast-forward about sixty years. In 2010, Shawn Achor, a graduate of Harvard University with both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, published The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work. In it he distills current research in neuroscience and positive psychology for a mainstream audience, showing how the effects of positive thinking can be leveraged for enhancing performance. And with the right culture in place, he argues, positive thinking can transform the future success and performance of not just individuals, but organizations, including businesses, non-profits, and, most relevant to our work at Educational Renaissance, schools.
So what exactly is Achor’s novel idea? What makes his book different from the growing mound of self-help literature? If you have seen his TED talk, the one that slingshotted him into the national spotlight, you will know that it is his work on the science of happiness.
In it Achor observes that people typically believe a common formula about how to attain happiness: work hard, become successful, and become happy. This process seems fairly intuitive after all. The most successful among us have certainly clocked long hours working, at least, most of them, in order to reach peak performance. And it would seem that the experience of success and all its accompanying benefits–compensation, fame, material comforts–would lead to happiness, or, at least, some forms of happiness for a brief time. This is the underlying principle of the American Dream, is it not?
But what Achor goes on to show from his research, which is quite fascinating, is that we have the formula precisely backwards. Success doesn’t lead to happiness, Achor argues, but rather, happiness leads to success. Happiness, optimism, and positive thinking fuel performance such that those in the workplace or the classroom who are happy regularly outperform those who tend to work with negative attitudes. This is the happiness advantage that Achor speaks of and it is his grand solution for not simply increasing profit margins in corporations, but for helping teachers achieve better results in their classrooms.
What is Happiness?
Of course, Achor’s entire theory hinges on two big ideas: 1) his definition of happiness and 2) how to obtain it. So what is his definition? On the one hand, he follows findings in positive psychology to define happiness as “the experience of positive emotions–pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose” (39). In this way, Achor’s understanding of happiness is easily attainable, at least brief moments of it, because it is simply a temporary emotional experience. Barbara Frederickson, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, for example, lists the top ten positive emotions as joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. At least a few of these emotional states are easy to come by, at least, for a short while.
But notice that Achor doesn’t limit his understanding of happiness to mere emotional experience. This we might expect of him, especially given his book’s categorization in somewhat of a notorious genre. But Achor, who has a master’s degree in religious ethics, connects happiness to something classical educators should find much more amenable: meaning and purpose. In fact, Achor goes on to crystallize his definition of happiness as “the joy we feel striving after our potential” (40).
This definition hits much closer to home in the classical tradition. In fact, it shares some conceptual likenesses to the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s writings. In general, Aristotle’s definition of happiness can be summarized as life-fulfillment and human flourishing, but a closer look will reveal the integral relationship that exists for the philosopher between happiness and virtue. We will then see that Aristotle’s definition of virtue and Achor’s idea of “striving after our potential” aren’t all that dissimilar, and that both play a role in their views of happiness.
Aristotle on Happiness and Virtue
Aristotle, in Nicomachean Ethics, writes that, “The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity to virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement” (X.6, 1177a1-2). Virtue, for Aristotle, is the quality that makes something excellent, or that which enables its possessor to perform his own particular function well (Ostwald 304). For example, the virtue of a shoemaker is his functional excellence to produce good shoes, especially as he acquires a growth mindset. An excellent shoemaker has arete, or virtue, with regards to his shoe-making. So the happy life, for Aristotle, is the life in which a person is conformed to excellence, or virtue, qua human being.
The question becomes, then, what does it mean to be excellent as a human being? Aristotle spends quite a bit of time contemplating this question and ultimately concludes that to be excellent as a human being is to possess and practice the virtues. This approach to life, though full of effort, leads to happiness.
There are two chief categories of virtues in Aristotle’s mind, three if you count activities like shoemaking: physical, moral, and intellectual. Physical virtues are those virtues having to do with physical activities, like shoemaking or weightlifting. Moral virtues are those virtues having to do with character such as courage, justice, patience, and truthfulness. And intellectual virtues are those virtues having to do with the mind that one contemplates, such as intuitive understanding, science, craft expertise, practical wisdom, and theoretical wisdom. For Aristotle, the greatest intellectual virtue to contemplate is theoretical wisdom, i.e. knowledge of necessary truths, because it contains the very form of happiness (VI.12, 1144a3-4). However, it is worth clarifying that all the virtues are worthy of practice and contemplation insofar as they entail the pursuit of excellence, which as I’ve said, is the route to happiness.
Lasting Joy and Life-Fulfillment
So if, for Aristotle, virtue–striving for excellence–is the foundation for happiness, whether the excellence be physical, moral, or intellectual, then we can see that Achor’s definition of happiness as “the joy we feel of striving after our potential” isn’t that far off. When we apply ourselves to deep and meaningful work, getting in the flow and cultivating valuable skills along the way, a certain lasting joy and fulfillment is the result throughout the process. And while Aristotle would be quick to distance emotion from virtue, even joy, he wouldn’t deny there is a relationship. He would simply insist that emotions, which he would view as stemming from the beastly part of being human, be kept in check by the mind, the rational and superior part of being human.
It appears, then, that there is concord between Achor’s and Aristotle’s views on happiness, particularly observed in their insistence on the importance of striving for excellence. Through living a life focused on living out one’s potential, one can experience life-fulfillment, which can lead to flourishing amidst that ongoing process. Of course, it is possible for one to be pursuing the virtuous life and still become the victim of great misfortune. This is why Aristotle himself hesitates to give a perfect formula for happiness. Life is too complex and unpredictable. Nevertheless, the general road to happiness is marked by effort and seeking to apply oneself to an external standard of excellence. This is the pathway of virtue.
But how does this square with Achor’s idea that we should start with happiness rather than end with it? And are these ideas consistent with a Christian worldview? In Part 2 of this blog series, “The Way of Wisdom” I will explore this question as I examine Achor’s recommended practices for experiencing happiness both on the front end as well through the process of striving for excellence. These practices, I will show, have interesting parallels with what Aristotle has to say about habit as well as what scripture says in Proverbs.
Works Cited
Ostwald, Martin. Nicomachean Ethics. Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1999