"I am happier," says Sherrod Ballentine, a district court mediator in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. "Every day, I feel so grateful to wake up this way."
Ballentine, 57, wasn't clinically depressed before; she was, as psychologists say, functional. But hoping to kick her mood up a notch, she took a one-day continuing education course called "Authentic Happiness and How to Obtain It." She has since completed a six-month class on the same subject, faithfully doing exercises like writing and reciting a "gratitude" letter to a friend and jotting down three happy events of each day every night for a week.
"It trains your mind to focus on the past as being very positive," she says. "It's completely different from traditional psychology, where you spend your time trying to figure out why you are so irrevocably sad." Ballentine says her newfound happiness even inspired her to take the next step in her career. She is soon to be a certified superior court mediator.
At first blush, her story sounds both seductive—who doesn't want to be happier?—and perhaps a little nutty. Surely the average person can't make herself happy the same way she would master calculus or Thai cooking, simply by taking a class. "The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness, you'll never find it," grumbled novelist C. P. Snow, and until recently, most psychologists, and perhaps most of the public, probably would have agreed. But an emerging movement known as positive psychology aims to do precisely that—provide a scientifically validated set of exercises, known as interventions, that lead happiness seekers to the grail.
"We seem to be developing a science that will increase the tonnage of happiness in the world," says Martin Seligman, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist widely credited with inventing the movement. "In my more grandiose moments, when I think about all these fitness centers where people are working up a sweat, I think you could have a little room called a well-being center and have a coach or psychologist take you through 6 or 10 weeks to make you happier. I would do it on a contingency basis. I would say people have to pay only if they are happier after 10 weeks."
