Let's wrap up this series on happiness with one more look at Martin Seligman's 2002 book, "Authentic Happiness." Dr Seligman, as you recall, is the founder of "positive psychology," which seeks to answer the hardly ever-asked question of "what goes right?" We are already overfamiliar with the things that go wrong.

A very important - indeed crucial - key to happiness, Dr Seligman explains, is building on our strengths and virtues. These are embedded in the old-fashioned concept of "character." The new social science of the early twentieth century, however, banished that notion, along with other Victorian-era artifacts. Instead, behavior was explained away as the result of environmental forces beyond a mere individual's control.

Thus, for example, crime rises from urban squalor, and the solution lies in building healthier and nurturing environments. In this context, looking into the issue of character is seen as morally-laden and judgmental. This has had the unfortunate side effect of creating a certain no-fault status to all manner of things we do wrong. You can make a good argument that our view of mental illness suffers from this form of myopia.

Meanwhile, character went underground, disguised as "personality." Dr Seligman is all for reviving character.

With his colleague Christopher Peterson, Dr Seligman explored 200 works of literature that dealt with virtue. These included: Aristotle, Plato, Aquinas, Augustine, the Old Testament and the Talmud, Confucius, Buddha, Lao-Tze, Bushido, The Koran, Ben Franklin, the Upanishads, and a lot more. Reports Dr Seligman:

To our surprise, almost every single one of these traditions flung across three thousand years and the entire face of the earth endorsed six virtues.

These comprised:

• Wisdom and knowledge
• Courage
• Love and humanity
• Justice
• Temperance
• Spirituality and transcendence

From there, Seligman and his colleagues identified 24 character strengths, clustered around the six virtues. Thus, under the virtue of "wisdom and knowledge," we have the character strengths of "curiosity/interest in the world," "love of learning," "judgment/critical thinking/open-mindedness," "ingenuity/originality/practical intelligence/street smarts," 'social intelligence/personal intelligence/emotional intelligence," and "perspective."

"Courage" would include valor and bravery and integrity while "love and humanity" would include kindness and generosity. The other virtues are filled in with various strengths. As Dr Seligman explains:

I believe that each person possesses several signature strengths. These are strengths of character that a person self-consciously owns, celebrates, and (if he or she can arrange life successfully) exercises every day in work, love play, and parenting.

Thus, the key to a good life (and authentic happiness) is using one's signature strengths all the time. This translates to such things as "recrafting your job to deploy your strengths and virtues." This not only makes work more enjoyable, but may transform routine work into a calling (which Dr Seligman defines as a passionate commitment to work for its own sake).