The big idea is that are three paths to a happy life: a comfortable life good life meaningful life.  Here's my favourite takeaway: “His goal was happiness in life.  He found that both a good life and a meaningful life were associated with life satisfaction.” The more or the more meaningful, the higher the satisfaction with life.  But surprisingly, the amount of joy in life did not contribute to life satisfaction."  Seligman Pleasant life is about having as many joys as possible in life and having the ability to enjoy those joys.  Strengthen the Good Life is about reshaping your work, love, friendships, free time, and parenting to play to your strengths, spend more time on your values, and increase the flow of your life.  A meaningful life is one that uses one's strengths in serving something greater than oneself.  There is a surprise here.  You don't have to be cheerful to be happy, and joy is not happiness.  Instead, you can focus on well-being activities to improve your life satisfaction.  Instead of focusing on hedonic motives such as pleasure, indulgence, and comfort, we can focus on happier motives such as personal growth, personal excellence, and contribution to the lives of others.  I have written before about living well and living a meaningful life.  Meaningful work is hard, what really matters, how you live your values and how you measure your life.  

“There are some differences between a happy life and a meaningful life,” says Roy Baumeister, a professor of psychology at Florida State University at Francis Epps.  He bases this claim on a paper he published last year in the Journal of Positive Psychology, ehich he co-authored with researchers at the University of Minnesota and Stanford.  They found that a meaningful life and a happy life are often inextricable linked.  And they wanted to know more about the differences between the two.  Her statistical analysis attempted to distinguish between those things that brought meaning to life but not happiness, and those brought happiness but no meaning.  Their results show that purpose (apart from happiness) has nothing to do with being healthy, having enough money, or feeling good in life, but another suggests that they are related.  More specificallly, researches identified five key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life.  Happy people are able to meet their own wants and needs, but they can seem to have little to do with life.  So health, wealth, and ease of life were all associated with happiness, but not with purpose.  Happiness means focusing on the present, and meaningful means thinking more about the past, present, futute, and their relationships.  Also,happiness seemed fleeting, but something meaningful seemed to last longer.  Meaning comes from giving to others.  Happiness comes from what they give you.