Guelph Mercury

GUELPH — Positive thinking is Jamie Gruman's thing as an academic, but he's not the kind of guy who wears a permanent smile or avoids the darker side of life.

An associate professor in the University of Guelph's department of management, he is a founding member and chair of the board of directors of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association. He is a psychologist by training, and a specialist in organizational behaviour.

He has taken a critical stance against the global 100 Days of Happiness Movement, www.100happydays.com, an online challenge asking citizens of the world to focus every day for 100 days on the big or little things that make them happy.

Gruman has been making the rounds on radio and television telling people that focusing too much, and for too long on happiness can actually have a negative impact on one's sense of happiness. It's neither advisable nor possible to be constantly happy, he said in an interview, and trying to do so can lead to a sense of failure.

The happiness challenge asks participants to find one thing each day for 100 days that makes them feel happy, and take a picture of it and post it to the challenge's website. Countless people are participating around the world. Most are failing.

"I think the premise is that if people take a minute a day to post something that makes them happy, they will be happier," Gruman said. "The idea is that if you do that for 100 days it will be affective."

Positive psychology is a relatively new study that uses scientific method to better understand how to live well, how to be happier, thrive and flourish, he said. The science has been widely misinterpreted because of connotations of the word positive, which suggests that perpetual happiness is an attainable goal.

"I'm a realist," he said. "I don't in any way deny the negative, and neither does positive psychology. A lot of people mistakenly think it is about walking around with a smile on your face. As a realist, I see the dark but I also see the light."

Thinking positively, he said, is not about putting on a bright smiley face proclaiming life to be "all lollipops and rainbows."

"Everybody makes that mistake all of the time," he said. "Yes, there is harm in that. It's not healthy. It's not normal. We have different emotions because they all serve a purpose. If your dog dies you should feel sad. If your wife leaves you, you should feel sad, or maybe guilty, depending on what you did."

Perpetual happiness, he said, can result from certain types of brain damage, but for normal, emotionally integrated people without brain damage, it is not normal.

Positive psychology is about understanding happiness. And when you understand it better you realize that happiness is not always desirable.

"The moods that we're in influence the way we make decisions," Gruman explained. "When we're in positive moods, when we're happy, we are more creative, but we also tend to rely more on heuristics, or shortcuts, when we make decisions. When we're in a negative mood, we are much more critical, much more focused on the details."

A more sombre mood may be more effective at problem solving.

"Do you want your politicians or business leaders to typically be in good moods or bad moods?" he asked. "Happiness itself is open to scrutiny, and this is one of the things that positive psychologists study."

The 100 Days of Happiness challenge is proving quite challenging for the majority of participants so far. A full 71 per cent have failed the challenge, most citing a lack of time to stop and smell the roses. Or maybe they simply realize that it's not possible to force happiness, or not advisable to always be on the lookout for happiness.

"I think it is just to get them to notice the little things that bring a smile to their faces," Gruman said, speaking of the movement. "We are as a species drawn to the negative, and for good reason — being drawn to the negative is adaptive and helps us survive."

Because of that natural tendency, we tend to think negatively even as we are falling asleep at night. We tend not to think about the good stuff, even though thinking about the positive does have a beneficial effect, he said.

roflanagan@guelphmercury.com