Authentic Happiness : Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment

by Martin E. P. Seligman

• ISBN13: 9780743222976
• ISBN10: 0743222970
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-08-27
• Publisher: Free Press

Summary

Over a decade ago, Martin Seligman charted a new approach to living with "flexible optimism." Now, in his most stimulating and persuasive book to date, the bestselling author ofLearned Optimismintroduces the revolutionary, scientifically based idea of "Positive Psychology." Positive Psychology focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses, asserting that happiness is not the result of good genes or luck. Seligman teaches readers that happiness can be cultivated by identifying and using many of the strengths and traits that they already possess -- including kindness, originality, humor, optimism, and generosity. By frequently calling upon their "signature strengths" in all the crucial realms of life, readers will not only develop natural buffers against misfortune and the experience of negative emotion, they will move their lives up to a new, more positive plane.Drawing on groundbreaking psychological research, Seligman shows how Positive Psychology is shifting the profession's paradigm away from its narrow-minded focus on pathology, victimology, and mental illness to positive emotion, virtue and strength, and positive institutions. Our signature strengths can be nurtured throughout our lives, with benefits to our health, relationships, and careers.Seligman provides the Signature Strengths Survey along with a variety of brief tests that can be used to measure how much positive emotion readers experience, in order to help determine what their highest strengths are. The life-changing lesson of Authentic Happiness is that by identifying the very best in ourselves, we can improve the world around us and achieve new and sustainable levels of authentic contentment, gratification, and meaning.

Author Biography

Martin E. P. Seligman, Ph.D., is the Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, the director of the Positive Psychology Network, and former president of the American Psychological Association. Among his twenty books are Learned Optimism and The Optimistic Child.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
PART I: POSITIVE EMOTION
Positive Feeling and Positive Character	3	(14)
How Psychology Lost Its Way and I Found Mine	17	(13)
Why Bother to Be Happy?	30	(15)
Can You Make Yourself Lastingly Happier?	45	(17)
Satisfaction about the Past	62	(21)
Optimism about the Future	83	(19)
Happiness in the Present	102	(23)
PART II: STRENGTH AND VIRTUE
Renewing Strength and Virtue	125	(9)
Your Signature Strengths	134	(31)
PART III: IN THE MANSIONS OF LIFE
Work and Personal Satisfaction	165	(20)
Love	185	(23)
Raising Children	208	(39)
Reprise and Summary	247	(3)
Meaning and Purpose	250	(11)
Appendix: Terminology and Theory	261	(4)
Acknowledgments	265	(6)
Endnotes	271	(34)
Index	305