Test your happiness levels and learn a bit about others' results

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	• Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment Martin Seligman Free Press, 2004 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 75 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

On-target wisdom for our time

Martin Seligman's Positive Psychology is just what the doctor ordered! We've been waiting for a way to release ourselves from the hold of the painful past and to feel optimistic about the future, despite recession, wars, disappointing candidates, and all the other angst that visits the thoughtful. In refreshing, candid tones, he turns psychology on its head and points it in the right direction, one we can willingly follow. His work helps us find our own strengths, and even more significant, find meaning and purpose in our lives by applying those strengths. Happiness is the natural byproduct of this process, making the investment of time and thought necessary to read and apply the book a most rewarding investment indeed. If you're searching for satisfaction, whether in work or in love, this will be a generous, kindly, clear, and forgiving guide.

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This is a keeper!

I've found this book to be enormously provocative and personally very helpful. I'm not a mental health professional but Seligman's ideas ring true for me. I've highly recommended it to all my relatives and friends! Two enthusiastic thumbs up!

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Test your happiness levels and learn a bit about others' results

I had expected more scientific research supporting the book's thesis. At the beginning I thought of all the happiness surveys or quizzes about how people feel and their moods in specific situations as unscientific. However, after some reading I understood that my expectations could hardly be met, since fortunately happiness is one of the most subjective issues and although objective factors like wealth and health have an influence on it, every individual has his personal (maybe genetic or maybe learned) patterns or attitudes towards life.

You can find all the quizzes in the book and answer them yourself to rate your levels of optimism, happiness, etc., which is interesting per se. The author also presents the results of the surveys performed with many people from different countries. This also gives interesting data about which factors have a greater influence on happiness, always showing that specific circumstances alter the results. For example, persons that have had a successful surgery in their recent past (which is a sign of illness) are happier than healthy ones (One might wonder!)

I had first skipped the section on kids, because I had no interest in the topic but returned to it after reading the rest of the book. I found it extremely interesting, indeed one of the best parts of the book and I would recommend its reading to parents, although I have no kids myself and I have not read other literature on the topic. You can disregard my comment as lacking first-hand experience as well as any kind of authority (maybe more experienced persons can refute the author's propositions, as apparently is the case), still I find it worth reading and worth judging by yourself.

For people interested in flow I will not recommend Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi's book on the topic, because I cannot properly spell his name and because I have not yet read it (although I will, since his book is one of the most quoted by authors of totally different fields). Instead I will recommend "First Break all the Rules" and its sequel "Now discover your strengths" by Marcus Buckingham. These books tell you why sticking to your strengths makes you happier than insisting on doing things in which you are not good at. Do not expect a scientific demonstration of this, just the results from a series of Gallup surveys that show that most of the times this is what people feel, packed in a management book format.

You can skip the last chapter of finding a meaning in your life. It is tortuous philosophical arguments for a kind of religion without God. I do not believe it will help anybody to find a meaning in life and on top, the arguments are extremely difficult to follow. Better look for meaning somewhere else.

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The original book on happiness is worth a read

Seligman is the father of "positive psychology," a branch of psychology that focuses on building on the positive elements of a person's life rather than spending time working through past traumas and challenges. Seligman describes a number of key principles of positive psychology in an interactive manner. For example, there are two self-assessments in the book that determine how much of an optimist you are and identify your "signature strengths". Seligman also includes exercises that can increase your happiness level and personal stories that bring the concepts to life. While this book doesn't summarize the scope of happiness research the way other books (like Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt or Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar), the reason is that this book is the foundation of the other research and, as such, is a good primer on Positive Psychology.

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Not even one half complaint.

I got the book just a few days after the purchase and it was in new condition as described. Perfect transaction.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

In this national bestseller -- Martin Seligman's most stimulating, persuasive book to date -- the acclaimed author of Learned Optimism introduces yet another revolutionary idea. Drawing on groundbreaking scientific 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 and mental health. Happiness, studies show, is not the result of good genes or luck. It can be cultivated by identifying and nurturing traits that we already possess -- including kindness, originality, humor, optimism, and generosity.

Seligman provides the tools you need in order to ascertain your most positive traits or strengths. Then he explains how, by frequently calling upon these "signature strengths" in all the crucial realms of life -- health, relationships, career -- you will not only develop natural buffers against misfortune and negative emotion, but also achieve new and sustainable levels of authentic contentment, gratification, and meaning.

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