The fundamentalist religions simply seem to offer more hope for a brighter future than do the more liberal, humanistic ones.
Psychology is much bigger than just medicine, or fixing unhealthy things. It’s about education, work, marriage – it’s even about sports. What I want to do is see psychologists working to help people build strengths in all these domains.
Positive thinking is the notion that if you think good thoughts, things will work out well. Optimism is the feeling of thinking things will be well and be hopeful.
If you were an optimistic teen, then you’ll be an optimist at 80. People’s reactions to bad events are highly stable over a half century or more.
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.
The word ‘happiness’ always bothered me, partly because it was scientifically unwieldy and meant a lot of different things to different people, and also because it’s subjective.
The goal of a life free of dysphoria is a snare and a delusion. A better goal is of good commerce with the world. Authentic happiness, astonishingly, can occur even in the presence of authentic sadness.
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.
One of my signature strengths is the love of learning, and by teaching, I have built it into the fabric of my life. I try to do some of it every day.
If we just wanted positive emotions, our species would have died out a long time ago.
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.
It is the combination of reasonable talent and the ability to keep going in the face of defeat that leads to success.
The best therapists can do with sadness, anger, and anxiety is to help patients live in the more comfortable part of their set range.