Seekers of happiness

“Every day I get better in every way.” These words should be pronounced easily, without effort, being between reality and sleep (in the evening, falling asleep, or in the morning, waking up), when our unconscious is most receptive to information. They are the quintessence of a method that was developed over a century ago by Émile Coué, an apothecary from the French town of Nancy. Helping the sick, he practiced hypnotherapy, but once noticed that hypnosis is ineffective if a person is indifferent to what is happening to him. Then Coue suggested that self-hypnosis could better affect the unconscious of a person. And soon his guesses were confirmed: offering clients his own painkiller (“Kue pills”), he recommended taking it, repeating: “Every day I get better.” And although the medicine was prepared from glucose, the patients recovered! This is how the placebo effect was discovered. Coue called his own method “conscious self-hypnosis”: it does not replace treatment, but sets the person up for recovery. The Coue method is considered the progenitor of «positive thinking», which is actively used in personal growth methods.

Carl Rogers (1902-1987): development of inner potential

Each person has a resource for development and spiritual growth, and you just need to be able to discover and realize it. This idea appeared in the 1940s and belonged to the American psychologist Carl Rogers, the author of the method of client-centered approach in psychotherapy. Rogers was absolutely sure that every person is inherently positive and that unfavorable conditions and circumstances hinder his self-realization. That is why the goal of client-centered therapy is to revitalize the creative power hidden within us. The emergence of this approach was a revolution in psychotherapy, which for a long time was interested only in human suffering, and now drew attention to its merits. The new approach paved the way for humanistic psychology, which was influenced by the psychologist Abraham Maslow. One of her main ideas is that not only suffering people need the support of a psychologist. If the basic needs of a person are satisfied, he has a fully conscious desire to live better, to fulfill himself more fully, and he may also need help.

Martin Seligman (b. 1942): A scientific approach to happiness

Since the advent of positive psychology in the scientific world, happiness has become an object of serious study. The main figure in this area is the director of the Center for Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania (USA), Martin Seligman. In the 1990s, he begins the first large-scale research on optimism and subjective well-being. The purpose of these projects is to identify what influences our sense of self and help everyone look at life more positively*. Seligman shares the ideas of Coue, Rogers, and Maslow that our thoughts and mental attitudes affect how we experience happiness. And this is not just a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven fact. His colleague David Lykken, studying identical twins who grew up in different families, came to the conclusion that the level of life satisfaction is only 50% dependent on our genes**. Obviously, genes will not be able to prevent us from feeling happy if one day we decide to change something. You just have to decide…

* M. Seligman «New Positive Psychology» (Sofia, 2006).

** D. Lykken «Happiness is A Stochastic Phenomenon». Psychological Science, 1996, vol. 7.