Word: seligmans
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Circumstances don't always define emotional states. Seligman acknowledges that extreme poverty is a downer, but says, "Once you're above the safety net, people in wealthier nations are not by and large noticeably happier than those in poorer nations." Climate isn't a crucial factor: "North Dakotans are just as happy as Floridians." Nor is money: "If you look at lottery winners, they get happy for a few months. But a year later, they're back where they were." Even a catastrophe--cancer, say--does little to alter one's overall outlook. "On average," Seligman observes, "people with...
...factors that may matter most are marriage and religious belief, Seligman says. "Married people are happier than any other configuration of people. And religious people are usually happier than nonreligious people...
...Seligman defines three categories of happiness. "The first is 'the pleasant life': the Goldie Hawn, Hollywood happiness--smiling, feeling good, being ebullient. The problem with the pleasant life is that not everyone can have it." And that, he says, is a matter of genetic predisposition. Perhaps half of us have it, which means the other half don't ever get to feel like Goldie...
...says Seligman, "these people are capable of the second form of happiness: 'the good life.' It consists first in knowing what your strengths are and then recrafting your life to use them--in work, love, friendship, leisure, parenting. It's about being absorbed, immersed, one with the music...
...Seligman calls his third and ultimate level "the meaningful life." It consists, he says, "in identifying your signature strengths and then using them in the service of something you believe is bigger than you are." And you don't have to be conventionally happy to achieve it. "Churchill and Lincoln," Seligman says, "were two profound depressives who dealt with it by having good and meaningful lives...