Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman
Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligmanis an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. Since the late 90's, Seligman has been an avid promoter within the scientific community for the field of positive psychology. His theory of learned helplessness is popular among scientific and clinical psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Seligman as the 31st most cited psychologist of the 20th century...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth12 August 1942
CountryUnited States of America
The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness. A life that does this is pregnant with meaning, and if God comes at the end, such a life is sacred.
Curing the negatives does not produce the positives.
It's a matter of ABC: When we encounter ADVERSITY, we react by thinking about it. Our thoughts rapidly congeal into BELIEFS. These beliefs may become so habitual we don't even realize we have them unless we stop to focus on them. And they don't just sit there idly; they have CONSEQUENCES.
Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals choose the way they think.
Habits of pessimism lead to depression, wither achievement, and undermine physical health. The good news is that pessimism can be unlearned, and that with its removal depression, underachievement, and poor health can be alleviated.
Just as the good life is something beyond the pleasant life, the meaningful life is beyond the good life.
Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith, and trust. Those about the present include joy, ecstasy, calm, zest, ebullience, pleasure, and (most importantly) flow; these emotions are what most people usually mean when they casually-but much too narrowly-talk about "happiness." The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity.
When it comes to our health, there are essentially four things under our control: the decision not to smoke, a commitment to exercise, the quality of our diet, and our level of optimism. And optimism is at least as beneficial as the others.
Optimism is invaluable for the meaningful life. With a firm belief in a positive future, you can throw yourself into the service of that which is larger than you are.
Optimism is a tool with a certain clear set of benefits: it fights depression, it promotes achievement and produces better health.
To be a virtuous person is to display, by acts of will, all or at least most of the six ubiquitous virtues: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.
Self-esteem cannot be directly injected. It needs to result from doing well, from being warranted.
What are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? How do we get from zero to plus five?
Flow occurs in your life when your highest skills are matched to challenges that quite exactly meet them.