How To See The Glass Half Full

Shortcuts to happiness often turn out to be detours. For most people, lasting satisfaction comes not from money, status or fleeting pleasure but from rising to the challenges of love, work and raising children. Here, from my book "Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment," is some guidance on staying happy.

l. Keep Your Illusions

When you're falling in love, it's easy to fixate on your new partner's strengths and ignore obvious faults. Perceptions change over time, however, even in strong relationships. What struck you as kindness may start to resemble soft-headedness. Integrity may morph into stubbornness, steadfastness into stodginess. How do happy couples avoid disillusionment? You might guess they assess each other coolly from the start, sparing themselves false expectations. Recent research suggests just the opposite. The key to lasting love, it seems, is not to avoid romantic illusions but to sustain them.

Sandra Murray, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, has developed a rigorous way to measure lovers' perceptions of each other. First she has volunteers rate their romantic partners on various strengths and failings. Once a person has been rated by his or her partner, Murray invites the person's friends to perform the same assessment. Then she compares the results. The crucial measure is the discrepancy between what your partner believes about your strengths and what your friends believe.

In Murray's studies, the happiest couples are not the most realistic but rather the most positive. Instead of confirming their friends' frank assessments, these people idealize their partners, blithely predicting that their relationships will withstand hard times. As it turns out, they really do fare better when trouble strikes. The larger the romantic illusion, the better the odds. How can that be? People who idealize their mates may be quicker to forgive small transgressions. And people who are idolized may try harder to please their partners.

Romantic illusions can't be willed into existence, but even a realist can downplay a partner's weaknesses. The stable couples in Murray's studies used the "yes, but" technique. One woman, brushing off her mate's tendency to pursue every minor point in a disagreement, said it helped keep small problems from growing into large ones. Another woman said her partner's lack of confidence made her "feel very caring toward him." Still another managed to praise her mate's obstinacy, saying, "I respect him for his strong beliefs." This strategy may not salvage a failing relationship, but it can help sustain a healthy one.

II. Turn Work Into Play

How do you frame work in relation to the rest of life? Scholars distinguish three kinds of "work orientation": a job, a career and a calling. You do a job for the paycheck at the end of the week, and when the wage stops, you quit. A career entails a deeper personal investment in work. You mark your achievements through money, prestige and power, and you move on when the promotions stop. Unlike a job or a career, a calling is a passionate commitment to work for its own sake. The effort you expend becomes its own reward, regardless of the money or status it brings. People with callings are consistently happier than those with mere jobs or careers. And if you think callings are only for artists and healers, think again. Recent studies suggest that any line of work can rise to that level.

In one seminal study, researchers led by Amy Wrzesniewski (rez-NES-kee) of New York University studied 28 hospital cleaners. Some viewed their work as drudgery, but others had found ways to make it meaningful. The cleaners with a calling believed strongly that they were helping patients get better, and they approached their work accordingly. They timed themselves for efficiency. They prided themselves on anticipating the doctors' and nurses' needs. And they took interest in brightening the patients' days, whether by rearranging furniture or decorating the walls. Researchers have seen the same phenomenon among secretaries, engineers, nurses, kitchen workers and haircutters. The key to contentment, their studies suggest, is not getting the perfect job but finding one you can make perfect (or at least better) through the use of your own strengths.

Part of what turns a job into a calling is the state known as flow. My colleague Mihaly Csikszent-mihalyi (Mike for short) defines flow as complete absorption in an activity whose challenges mesh perfectly with your abilities. Flow is not the pleasure you derive from a warm shower or a cold beer but the loss of self-consciousness you experience while engrossed in a task that calls on your strengths. People who experience it are not only happier but more productive, for they stop thanking God that it's Friday. "I have always subscribed to the expression," the historian John Hope Franklin once said, "because to me Friday means I can work for two days without interruption."

III. Teach Kids To Thrive

Have you ever wondered why children are so bubbly? They radiate joy and curiosity almost any time they feel safe--and for good reason. These positive emotions help them build the resources they need to navigate the world. As exuberant youngsters play and explore, they gain physical strength, mental agility and social skills. The mastery they experience triggers more positive emotion, creating an upward spiral of more mastery and more good feeling. Our main job as parents is not to correct our kids' errors but to ease them onto this escalator.

How can we help? Experts are divided on the wisdom of letting your newborn share your bed, but I believe there are good reasons to do it. Common sense, not to mention eons of human experience, suggest that babies become more secure and less fearful when they sleep within touching distance of the adults their lives depend on. Many parents resist the idea, fearing they will crush their infant during the night (leaving her alone is far riskier) or that the child's antics will keep them awake (chances are she'll sleep better). Besides making a baby feel safe, co-sleeping extends the quality time that parents can spend with her. Instead of sandwiching an hour between work and bedtime, they interact with her whenever she stirs. All of this helps cultivate what the Japanese call amai, the sense of being cherished that children attain when raised lovingly.

Just as a shared bed gives a child a secure base from which to venture forth, "synchrony games" can give her an early taste of mastery. Carly, the baby in my family, loves to play them at mealtime. Once she satisfies her appetite for Cheerios, the rest of the family waits for her to bang on the table. When she bangs, we all bang. She smiles. She bangs three times and we all bang three times. She laughs. Besides having a grand time, Carly is learning that her actions influence the people she loves--that she matters. Praise has a similar effect, but unlike love and warmth, praise subverts its own purpose when doled out indiscriminately, for it tells the child her actions don't count. Knowing that they do is a greater reward.