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Martin Seligman Biography

Martin Seligman

Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman (/ˈsɛlɪɡmən/; born August 12, 1942) is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. Since the late 1990s, Seligman has been an avid promoter within the scientific community for the field of positive psychology. His theory of learned helplessness is popular among scientific and clinical psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Seligman as the 31st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.

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Martin Seligman Quotes

Psychology should be just as concerned with building strength as with repairing damage

Motivation, Inspiration, Psychology, Building, Concerned

The pursuit of happiness is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as a right of all Americans, as well as on the self-improvement shelves of every American bookstore. Yet the scientific evidence makes it seem unlikely that you can change your level of happiness in any sustainable way. It suggests that we each have a fixed range for happiness just as we do for weight. And just as dieters almost always regain the weight they lose, sad people don't become lastingly happy, and happy people don't become lastingly sad.

Happy, Lastingly, People, Pursuit Of Happiness, Range, Self

You go into flow when your highest strengths are deployed to meet the highest challenges that come your way.

Challenges, Way, Flow, Meet, Strengths, Come

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.

Art, Hope, Limit, Limits, Original, Situation

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

Accomplish Nothing, Changing, Depression, Hopeful, Hopelessness, Self Esteem

Doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested.

Exercise, Increase, Kindness, Produces, Reliable

Positive emotion can be about the past, the present, or the future. The positive emotions about the future include optimism, hope, faith, and trust. Those about the present include joy, ecstasy, calm, zest, ebullience, pleasure, and (most importantly) flow; these emotions are what most people usually mean when they casually-but much too narrowly-talk about "happiness. " The positive emotions about the past include satisfaction, contentment, fulfillment, pride, and serenity.

Contentment, Happiness, Hope, Mean, Pleasure, Pride

Optimism generates hope. . . hope releases dreams. . . dreams set goals. . . enthusiasm follows

Dream, Goal, Optimism, Dreams, Hope

The clearer the rules and the limits enforced by parents, the higher the child's self-esteem. The more freedom the child had, the lower his self-esteem.

Children, Higher, Limits, Parent, Parents, Self Esteem

We're not prisoners of the past.

Past, Prisoner, Prisoners

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?

Doe, Flow, Home, Place, Stop, Studied

It's a matter of ABC: When we encounter ADVERSITY, we react by thinking about it. Our thoughts rapidly congeal into BELIEFS. These beliefs may become so habitual we don't even realize we have them unless we stop to focus on them. And they don't just sit there idly; they have CONSEQUENCES.

Adversity, Become, Focus, Stop, Thinking, Thoughts

Just as the good life is something beyond the pleasant life, the meaningful life is beyond the good life.

Meaningful, Good Life, Life Is, Life, Good, Pleasant

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.

Animal, Animals, Sex, Water, Wild

Some find that very optimistic people have benign illusions about themselves. These people may think they have more control, or more skill, than they actually do. Others have found that optimistic people have a good handle on reality. The jury is still out.

Benign, Control, Jury, Optimistic, Reality, Thinking

So Positive Psychology takes seriously the bright hope that if you find yourself stuck in the parking lot of life, with few and only ephemeral pleasures, with minimal gratifications, and without meaning, there is a road out. This road takes you through the countryside of pleasure and gratification, up into the high country of strength and virtue, and finally to the peaks of lasting fulfillment: meaning and purpose

Country, Psychology, Finding Yourself, Road, Gratification, Gratifications

We deprive our children, our charges, of persistence. What I am trying to say is that we need to fail, children need to fail, we need to feel sad, anxious and anguished. If we impulsively protect ourselves and our children, as the feel-good movement suggests, we deprive them of learning-persistence skills.

Children, Persistence, Skills, Suggests, Sad, Deprive

On the other hand, permanent causes produce helplessness far into the future, and universal causes spread helplessness through all your endeavors.

Causes, Future, Hands, Helplessness, Produce, Universal

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.

Believe, Opposites, Suffering, Psychologists, Ends

When it comes to our health, there are essentially four things under our control: the decision not to smoke, a commitment to exercise, the quality of our diet, and our level of optimism. And optimism is at least as beneficial as the others.

Commitment, Exercise, Optimism, Smoke

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