ABSTRACT
A really fundamental question is: what is happiness? While this could provoke deep philosophical investigation, for our purposes the answer is very simple: happiness is subjective wellbeing. As such, a person’s happiness is not for anyone else to define except the person himself or herself, whose personal experience for good or for ill is the litmus test for its validity. Still, we need to distinguish between a moment’s joy or excitement and a more ‘enduring level of happiness,’ which was the subject of discussion in Seligman’s book Authentic Happiness (2003). It is exactly such an enduring level of happiness that we seek to promote.
