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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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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
Life
Pleasant
Pursue
Emotions
Positive
Emotion
Present
Future
Pursues
Past
Successfully

More quotes by Martin Seligman

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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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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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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.
Martin Seligman
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Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.
Martin Seligman
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By activating an expansive, tolerant, and creative mindset, positive feelings maximize the social, intellectual, and physical benefits that will accrue.
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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.
Martin Seligman
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Optimism generates hope...hope releases dreams...dreams set goals...enthusiasm follows
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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.
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.
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The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
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.
Martin Seligman
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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.
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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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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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.
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.
Martin Seligman
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We're not prisoners of the past.
Martin Seligman
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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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Money, amazingly, is losing its power... Our economy is rapidly changing from a money economy to a satisfaction economy.
Martin Seligman
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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