Happiness Past, Present, and Future

Martin Seligman, in his book Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment, talks about what makes a person happy when thinking about the past, looking ahead to the future, or engaging with the present moment.  To be happy with the past, he says we should cultivate gratitude and forgiveness.  To look forward to the future, cultivate optimism.  And to enjoy the present, focus on two different things:  pleasures and "gratifications".

Seligman defines pleasures as "delights that have clear sensory and strong emotional components".  Things that feel great when you tune into them.

He defines "gratifications" as activities that are often NOT emotional, are at least not especially joyful while they are happening.  They are challenging, and you get totally "lost" in the activity as you give it all you've got.  Playing a sport.  Drawing a picture.  Entertaining an audience.  You apply your best strengths to the activity to perform with excellence.  Vince Lombardi once said, "I firmly believe than any man's finest hour, the greatest fulfillment of all that he holds dear, is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."  It's not always this exhausting; it's any activity that fully engages you, but it isn't simply passively enjoying sensations.

What Lombardi is describing is not pleasure.  It doesn't feel like a nice hot bath or a massage.  But it is just as important for finding happiness as pleasure.  In fact, Seligman says that--although both gratification and pleasure are important for finding happiness in the present moment, gratification is even more important.  Pleasure is more fleeting.  It is based on some kind of sensory stimulation, and it ceases as soon as the stimulation ends.  But gratification stays with you long after you "lie exhausted on the field of battle".