Happiness is a two-way street shared with your fellow man (Gittins - SMH)

Any conception of happiness that focuses on 'me' and 'my wants' is ultimately barren, Ross Gittins explains.

Most of the academic study of happiness relies on surveys that ask people to rate their satisfaction with their lives on a scale of, say, one to 10. That's a bit broader, but recent research suggests people's answers to such a question are too greatly influenced by how they were feeling at the time they were asked.

Seligman has been giving the question much thought and the result of his cogitation is outlined in his latest book, Flourish. His objective is to guide the positive psychology movement away from happiness as its goal to something more encompassing, which he dubs ''wellbeing''.

Wellbeing, he argues, has five elements, of which only the first, ''positive emotion'', covers the narrow conception of happiness. He calls this ''the pleasant life''

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Seligman's third element is ''meaning''. The meaningful life involves ''belonging to and serving something that you believe is bigger than the self,'' he says. This is where other people first enter the picture.