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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.

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
Ends
Goodness
Components
Power
Sacred
Pregnant
Doe
Forward
Realms
Deriving
Every
Meaning
Consists
Signature
Good
Knowledge
Add
Signatures
Life
Happiness
Meaningful
Component
Living
Main
Adds
Comes
Using
Strengths

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Psychology should be just as concerned with building strength as with repairing damage
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Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.
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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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The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who, in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually.
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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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Positive, optimistic sales people sell more than pessimistic sales people.
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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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We're not prisoners of the past.
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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.
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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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Reaching beyond where you are is really important.
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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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Whether or not we have hope depends on two dimensions of our explanatory style pervasiveness and permanence.
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The Fundamentalist Religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.
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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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On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavors.
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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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Success requires persistence, the ability to not give up in the face of failure. I believe that optimistic explanatory style is the key to persistence.
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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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There is one aspect of happiness that's been well studied, and it's the notion of flow. Ask yourselves, when for you does time stop? When are you truly at home, wanting to be no place else?
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