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Once a depressed person becomes active and hopeful, self-esteem always improves. Bolstering self-esteem without changing hopelessness, without changing passivity, accomplishes nothing.

Martin Seligman

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Martin Seligman
Age: 82
Born: 1942
Born: August 12
Bridge Player
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
Albany
New York
Martin E. P. Seligman
Martin E P Seligman
M. E. P. Seligman
M E P Seligman
M. Seligman
M Seligman
Seligman
Seligman M
Seligman M.
Seligman M. E. P.
Seligman MEP
Martin Elias Peter Seligman
Persons
Depressed
Person
Hopeful
Without
Depression
Nothing
Esteem
Bolstering
Self
Accomplish
Accomplishes
Always
Changing
Passivity
Active
Improves
Becomes
Hopelessness

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We're not prisoners of the past.
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Whether or not we have hope depends on two dimensions of our explanatory style pervasiveness and permanence.
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Optimism is a tool with a certain clear set of benefits: it fights depression, it promotes achievement and produces better health.
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One of the things psychologists used to say was that if you are depressed, anxious or angry, you couldn't be happy. Those were at opposite ends of a continuum. I believe that you can be suffering or have a mental illness and be happy - just not in the same moment that you're sad.
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Ten years ago, when I was on an airplane and I introduced myself to my seatmate, and told them [I was a psychologist], they'd move away from me. ... And now when I tell people what I do, they move toward me.
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People who believe they cause good things tend to like themselves better than people who believe good things come from other people or circumstances.
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Psychology is much bigger than just medicine, or fixing unhealthy things. Its about education, work, marriage - its even about sports. What I want to do is see psychologists working to help people build strengths in all these domains.
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In a society in which individualism is becoming rampant, people more and more believe that they are the center of the world. Such a belief system makes individual failure almost inconsolable.
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You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way.
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When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity.
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The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
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Just as the good life is something beyond the pleasant life, the meaningful life is beyond the good life.
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Doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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What are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? How do we get from zero to plus five?
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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.
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Money, amazingly, is losing its power... Our economy is rapidly changing from a money economy to a satisfaction economy.
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Flow occurs in your life when your highest skills are matched to challenges that quite exactly meet them.
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