M Seligman Quotes & Sayings

The optimist believes that bad events have specific causes, while good events will enhance everything he does; the pessimist believes that bad events have universal causes and that good events are caused by specific factors. When — Martin E.P. Seligman

I believe it is within our capacity that by the year 2051 that 51 percent of the human population will be flourishing. That is my charge. — Martin Seligman

When our grandparents failed, they had comfortable spiritual furniture to rest in. They had, for the most part, their relationship to God, their relationship to a nation they loved, their relationship to a community and a large extended family. Faith in God, community, nation, and the large extended family have all eroded in the last forty years, and the spiritual furniture that we used to sit in has become threadbare. — Martin E.P. Seligman

The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure. — Martin Seligman

Doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested. — Martin Seligman

Alcoholics are, in truth, failures, and their failure is a simple failure of will. They have made bad choices, and they continue to do so every day. By calling them victims of a disease, we magically shift the burden of the problem from choice and personal control, where it belongs, to an impersonal force - disease. — Martin E.P. Seligman

The genius of Peterson and Seligman's classification is to get the conversation going, to propose a specific list of strengths and virtues, and then let the scientific and therapeutic communities work out the details. Just as the DSM is thoroughly revised every ten or fifteen years, the classification of strengths and virtues (known among positive psychologists as the "un-DSM") is sure to be revised and improved in a few years. In daring to be specific, in daring to be wrong, Peterson and Seligman have demonstrated ingenuity, leadership, and hope. — Jonathan Haidt

As he moves through his day, sometimes he stops and just stares at me. There is something on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn't say it. I'm not sure he knows what it is. — Melissa Seligman

Finding temporary and specific causes for misfortune is the art of hope: Temporary causes limit helplessness in time, and specific causes limit helplessness to the original situation. — Martin Seligman

You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way. — Martin Seligman

The meeting [in San Antonio of the National Women's Political Caucus] featured a cattle show at which a herd of Democratic candidates- Glenn, Cranston, Mondale, Hart, and Hollings- pantingly pantomined their fidelity to feminism, stopping just short of a pledge to use nuclear weapons against any states that omit to ratify the Equal Right Amendment. — Daniel Seligman

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. — Martin Seligman

I think you can be depressed and flourish, I think you can have cancer and flourish, I think you can be divorced and flourish. When we believed that happiness was only smiling and good mood, that wasn't very good for people like me, people in the lower half of positive affectivity. — Martin Seligman

If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago. — Martin Seligman

We deprive our children, our charges, of persistence. What I am trying to say is that we need to fail, children need to fail, we need to feel sad, anxious and anguished. If we impulsively protect ourselves and our children, as the feel-good movement suggests, we deprive them of learning-persistence skills. — Martin Seligman

I've been bothered about time generally and our tripartite division of time into past, present, and future. I think I know what the past is, and I think I know what future is, but I'm really not comfortable with the notion of present. — Martin Seligman

On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavors. — Martin Seligman

I don't mind being wrong, and I don't mind changing my mind. — Martin Seligman

I'm all for past influences; the question is whether they are deterministic. Freud and the behaviorists argue that what we are at any given moment is billiard balls whose past determines our future course. That doesn't take into account that we are forever generating internal representations of positive futures and choosing among them. — Martin Seligman

I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do. — Martin Seligman

P is positive emotion, E is engagement, R is relationships, M is meaning and A is accomplishment. Those are the five elements of what free people chose to do. Pretty much everything else is in service of one of or more of these goals. That's the human dashboard. — Martin Seligman

Optimistic people generally feel that good things will last a long time and will have a beneficial effect on everything they do. And they think that bad things are isolated: They won't last too long and won't affect other parts of life. — Martin Seligman

Years later, when I got to college, I learned about an important theory of psychology called Learned Helplessness, developed by Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman. This theory, backed up by years of research, is that a great deal of depression grows out of a feeling of helplessness: the feeling that you cannot control your environment. — Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

You can have meaning, accomplishment, engagement and good relationships, even if you are dull on the positive affect side. — Martin Seligman

Second, you learn to dispute the automatic thoughts by marshaling contrary evidence. — Martin E.P. Seligman

Practiced regularly (twice a day), relaxation or meditation prevents angry arousal. — Martin E.P. Seligman

I don't think anyone's found a way of eliminating thoughts of danger and loss. It's rather that, when they're unrealistic, you become an acrobat at marshaling evidence against them. — Martin Seligman

Well-being cannot exist just in your own head. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment. — Martin Seligman

There are physical characteristics which are inherited. These include things like good looks, high intelligence, physical coordination. These attributes contribute to success in life, and success in life is a determinant of optimism. — Martin Seligman

Psychology should be just as concerned with building strength as with repairing damage — Martin Seligman

So anger helps us defend threatened territory - it is just, and it is honest. Not only that - it is healthy. It is widely believed that bottling up anger can kill us, slowly and in three different ways. — Martin E.P. Seligman

Exploders, people who have frequent outbursts of temper, also have more cancer than normal people. — Martin E.P. Seligman

The drive to resist compulsion is more important in wild animals than sex, food, or water ... The drive for competence or to resist compulsion is a drive to avoid helplessness. — Martin Seligman

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. — Martin Seligman

Fourth, you learn how to distract yourself from depressing thoughts. — Martin E.P. Seligman

The best therapists can do with sadness, anger, and anxiety is to help patients live in the more comfortable part of their set range. — Martin Seligman

The goal of a life free of dysphoria is a snare and a delusion. A better goal is of good commerce with the world. Authentic happiness, astonishingly, can occur even in the presence of authentic sadness. — Martin Seligman

Authentic happiness derives from raising the bar for yourself, not rating yourself against others. — Martin E.P. Seligman

Suppose you could be hooked up to a hypothetical 'experience machine' that, for the rest of your life, would stimulate your brain and give you any positive feelings you desire. Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine. It is not just positive feelings we want: we want to be entitled to our positive feelings. — Martin Seligman

So Positive Psychology takes seriously the bright hope that if you find yourself stuck in the parking lot of life, with few and only ephemeral pleasures, with minimal gratifications, and without meaning, there is a road out. This road takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfillment: meaning and purpose — Martin Seligman