I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do.
Martin SeligmanRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True happiness comes from personal growth and virtues, not from shortcuts or superficial means.
This quote by Martin Seligman emphasizes that relying on quick fixes or shortcuts to achieve feelings of happiness and fulfillment can lead to a lack of genuine spiritual well-being. Instead of feeling entitled to happiness without effort, individuals should cultivate their personal strengths and virtues to experience deeper, lasting joy and contentment, even in the presence of material wealth.
Themes
HappinessVirtuesPersonal GrowthSpiritualityShortcuts
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote in a motivational speech about personal development.
More from Martin Seligman
All quotes →One of my worries about America is the epidemic of depression we've been in. One of the possibilities about that is that the 'I' gets bigger and bigger, and the 'we' gets smaller and smaller.
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The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure.
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I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral.
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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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Perhaps the single most robust fact across many surveys is that married people are happier than anyone else.
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