Word: seligmans
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...course, you can train yourself to be optimistic through sheer mental discipline. Ever since psychologist Martin Seligman crafted the phrase "learned optimism" in 1991 and started offering optimism training, there's been a thriving industry in the kind of thought reform that supposedly overcomes negative thinking. You can buy any number of books and DVDs with titles like Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, in which you will learn mental exercises to reprogram your outlook from gray to the rosiest pink: "affirmations," for example, in which you repeat upbeat predictions over and over to yourself; "visualizations" in which you post...
...Stephen J. Seligman ’52 is a research professor at New York Medical College...
...been 10 years since University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman kick-started the field of Positive Psychology - the study of what makes people happy, what makes life fulfilling and the role of positive emotions in the human psyche. (Traditionally, of course, psychology has focused on the reverse: sadness, anxiety, anger, grief...
...Seligman has pioneered a number of well-publicized happiness-boosting exercises, for example: keeping a gratitude journal, jotting down three good things or "blessings" that occur each day, making a practice of doing "acts of kindness" for others, writing a letter of gratitude to a mentor. But more recent research, particularly by Sonja Lyubomirsky at University of California, Riverside, indicates that some of these exercises can lose their power with too much repetition: "They become stale and stagnant," says Lyubomirsky...
...some studies. That's in contrast to the 40% to 60% heritability of most other personality traits, like agreeableness and conscientiousness. Science suggests that the greater part of an optimistic outlook can be acquired with the right instruction - a theory borne out in a study of college freshmen by Seligman. Pessimistic students who took a 12-week optimism-training course devised by Seligman - which included exercises like writing a letter of gratitude then reading it aloud to someone - were less likely to visit the student health center for illnesses during the next four years than their similarly pessimistic peers...