If positive psychology aims to build well being on the planet, wellbeing must be build able. That sounds trivial, but it is not. The behaviourists of the first half of the twentieth century were optimists: they believed that if you could rid the world of the disabling conditions of life - poverty, racism, injustice - human life would be transformed for the better. Contrary to their insouciant optimism, it turns out that many aspects of human behaviour do not change lastingly. Your waste line is a prime example. Dieting is a scam, one that bilks americans out of USD 50 billion annually. You can follow any diet on the best seller list and within a month loose 5% of your body weight. I did the watermelon diet for thirty days and lost twenty pounds. I had diarrhoea for a month. But like 80%-95% of dieters, I regained all that weight and more within three years. Similarly, as we will see in the next chapter much psycho therapy and many drugs are merely cosmetic, relieving the symptoms for a short time, followed by a dismaying return to square one.
Is well being like your waistline - just a temporary boost followed by relapse to your usual curmudgeonliness - or can it be lastingly changed? Before positive psychology started a decade ago, most psychologist had become pessimistic about lasting changes in happiness. the hope that better externalities could make people lastingly happier was discouraged by a study of lottery winners, who were happier for a few months after their windfall but soon felt back to their habitual level of grouchiness or cheerfulness. We adapt readily to windfall, job promotion, or marriage, so theorists argue, and we soon want to trade up to yet more goodies to raise our plummeting happiness. If we trade up successfully, we stay on the hedonic treadmill, but we will always need yet another shot.
