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What are the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish? How do we get from zero to plus five?

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
Plus
Beings
Conditions
Five
Human
Humans
Enabling
Make
Flourish
Zero

More quotes by Martin Seligman

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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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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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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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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 pleasant life: a life that successfully pursues the positive emotions about the present, past, and future.
Martin Seligman
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The Fundamentalist Religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.
Martin Seligman
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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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On the relationship side, if you teach people to respond actively and constructively when someone they care about has a victory, it increases love and friendship and decreases the probability of depression.
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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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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
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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.
Martin Seligman
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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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Self-esteem cannot be directly injected. It needs to result from doing well, from being warranted.
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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.
Martin Seligman
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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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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.
Martin Seligman
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Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.
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Flow occurs in your life when your highest skills are matched to challenges that quite exactly meet them.
Martin Seligman