FLOURISH: Daniel Coyle on the Art and Science of Feeling Alive

I'm Rufus Griscomb and this is the next big idea. Today, the surprising power of widening your gaze. What does it mean to flourish? I don't know exactly, but I like the sound of it. It evokes growth, health, possibility.

I also associate it with the positive psychology movement started by Mikhail McSentmihai and Martin Seligman some thirty years ago. What's positive psychology? It's just applying the tools of science to help people live the best lives they can, rather than just manage mental illness. Why did it take the field of psychology so long to do this? I I've always wondered this, but it's a field that's given rise to decades of research and writing that has inspired millions.

You could say that it's a continuation of a distinctly American tradition. Just a couple weeks ago, Walter Isaacson and I talked about how Ben Franklin was in some sense the father of the self help genre. Though intellectuals have looked down their noses at self-help for centuries, I think it contains within it some of the best of the American sensibility. When you think about it, implicit in the term self-help is the idea that we can, through our own efforts at collective learning, improve ourselves. We can help each other better navigate the world.

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