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 good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Living a good life involves utilizing your unique strengths to achieve true happiness and fulfillment.
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing and employing one's inherent strengths on a daily basis as a means to achieve genuine happiness and satisfaction in life. According to Seligman, true fulfillment comes from engaging in activities that align with our authentic selves and utilizing our unique abilities, leading to a richer and more gratifying experience.
Themes
Good LifeHappinessStrengthsGratificationAuthenticity
In practice
Example use cases
During a motivational talk about self-improvement and happiness.
More from Martin Seligman
All quotes βOne 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.
Martin SeligmanRead
The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure.
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.
Martin SeligmanRead
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.
Martin SeligmanRead
Perhaps the single most robust fact across many surveys is that married people are happier than anyone else.
Martin SeligmanRead
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