"The more you use your signature strengths in new ways each day, the stronger you become."
This quote by Martin Seligman suggests that consistently employing one's unique talents (signature strengths) in novel ways on a daily basis can contribute to personal growth and development. Essentially, it implies that the exercise of our innate abilities enhances our resilience and vitality, as we not only apply them in familiar situations but also challenge ourselves to use them creatively in new contexts.
"Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions."
This quote emphasizes that true, lasting happiness is an outcome of one's personal efforts rather than a predetermined state. It encourages individuals to take control of their lives by engaging in positive actions, like cultivating meaningful relationships, pursuing passions, and practicing gratitude, among others. In other words, instead of waiting for external circumstances to bring happiness, we should actively create it through our choices and behaviors.
"The most important thing to teach our children is that the purpose of their lives is not to be happy, but to matter, to have it make some difference on this planet that we live upon."
This quote by Martin Seligman suggests that a primary goal for children's upbringing should not just be to ensure their personal happiness, but rather to instill in them the desire and understanding of making a meaningful impact on the world. By teaching children that they have the potential to "matter" and contribute significantly to society, Seligman emphasizes that finding purpose and making a positive difference is what gives life meaning. This perspective encourages individuals to develop a sense of responsibility towards their community and planet, fostering compassionate, engaged, and effective global citizens.
"We've found that what makes life worth living are jobs well done, strong relationships, and contributing to something larger than yourself."
This quote by Martin Seligman highlights three key elements of a fulfilling life: achieving excellence in work (jobs well done), building strong relationships, and finding purpose through contributions to something greater than oneself. In essence, it suggests that a meaningful life is one where we can excel at our endeavors, connect with others, and feel a sense of significance by contributing to something beyond ourselves.
"Pessimistic explanatory style has been found to be a better predictor of subsequent depression than has the level of stressful event."
This quote suggests that a person's tendency to explain negative events in a pessimistic way is more closely linked to the onset of depression compared to the actual number or severity of stressful events they encounter. In simpler terms, it's not just about how many bad things happen to us, but how we perceive and interpret those events that can increase our risk for depression. A pessimistic explanatory style involves believing that a negative event will last a long time, that it will undermine everything, and that it is one's own fault or a reflection of personal inadequacy, which can contribute to a cycle of negative thinking that may lead to depression.
Sexual performance problems, such as impotence and frigidity, are 70 to 90 percent changeable. But a homosexual who wants to be a heterosexual - that's close to unchangeable. And a transsexual - say a man who believes he's really a woman in a man's body - is completely unchangeable; you'd have to change the body to conform to the psyche.
- Martin Seligman
Positive psychology is not remotely intended to replace therapy or pharmacology. So when depressed, anxious or in panic or post-traumatic stress disorder, I am all for therapies that will work. Positive psychology is another arrow in the quiver of public policy and psychology through which we can raise wellbeing above zero.
- Martin 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
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
It's my belief that, since the end of the Second World War, psychology has moved too far away from its original roots, which were to make the lives of all people more fulfilling and productive, and too much toward the important, but not all-important, area of curing mental illness.
- 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 have never worked on interrogation; I have never seen an interrogation, and I have only a passing knowledge of the literature on interrogation. With that qualification, my opinion is that the point of interrogation is to get at the truth, not to get at what the interrogator wants to hear.
- Martin Seligman
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