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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.

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
Findings
Helplessness
Finding
Misfortune
Limits
Misfortunes
Causes
Temporary
Situation
Limit
Hope
Specific
Art
Originals
Time
Original

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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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I believe that traditional wisdom is incomplete. A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed, but if he believes he cannot compose music, he will come to nothing. He will not try hard enough. He will give up too soon when the elusive right melody takes too long to materialize.
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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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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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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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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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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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The Fundamentalist Religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.
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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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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.
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Self-esteem cannot be directly injected. It needs to result from doing well, from being warranted.
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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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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 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.
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Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.
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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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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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We're not prisoners of the past.
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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.
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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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